Possible bug in symbolic link determination

[Mikael Andersson]

Autoconf version 2.59

Creating a configure script with autoconf produces the following check for
symbolic links:

rm -f conf$$ conf$$.exe conf$$.file
echo >conf$$.file
if ln -s conf$$.file conf$$ 2>/dev/null; then
  # We could just check for DJGPP; but this test a) works b) is more generic
  # and c) will remain valid once DJGPP supports symlinks (DJGPP 2.04).
  if test -f conf$$.exe; then
    # Don't use ln at all; we don't have any links
    as_ln_s='cp -p'
  else
    as_ln_s='ln -s'
  fi
elif ln conf$$.file conf$$ 2>/dev/null; then
  as_ln_s=ln
else
  as_ln_s='cp -p'
fi
rm -f conf$$ conf$$.exe conf$$.file


My question is, why does it execute:
ln -s conf$$.file conf$$
and then test a file:
test -f conf$$.exe

The ".exe" here could be a bug and the "test -f conf$$.exe" seems to be
false always in this case (the file does not exist so it is not a regular
file. Because it is false it is always assumed that ln -s can be used.

Any comments?


Cheers,

-Mikke