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bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity
From: |
Paul Eggert |
Subject: |
bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity) |
Date: |
Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:49:40 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20110929 Thunderbird/7.0.1 |
On 11/20/11 12:26, Jim Meyering wrote:
> ln is particularly confusing,
You can say that again! I found Michael's comment helpful, even if we
can't satisfy every part of his request due to the need to make man
pages brief reference manuals rather than longwinded tutorials.
I suggest the following further changes, which follow his suggestions
(1) to remove the use of the never-defined term "references", and (2)
to define "destination" and use that definition systematically (we
weren't doing that for -n).
diff --git a/src/ln.c b/src/ln.c
index 88737ed..9f09933 100644
--- a/src/ln.c
+++ b/src/ln.c
@@ -345,6 +345,7 @@ In the 1st form, create a link to TARGET with the name
LINK_NAME.\n\
In the 2nd form, create a link to TARGET in the current directory.\n\
In the 3rd and 4th forms, create links to each TARGET in DIRECTORY.\n\
Create hard links by default, symbolic links with --symbolic.\n\
+By default, destinations (locations of new links) should not already exist.\n\
When creating hard links, each TARGET must exist. Symbolic links\n\
can hold arbitrary text; if later resolved, a relative link is\n\
interpreted in relation to its parent directory.\n\
@@ -363,9 +364,9 @@ Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
options too.\n\
"), stdout);
fputs (_("\
-i, --interactive prompt whether to remove destinations\n\
- -L, --logical make hard links to symbolic link references\n\
- -n, --no-dereference treat destination that is a symlink to a\n\
- directory as if it were a normal file\n\
+ -L, --logical dereference TARGETs that are symbolic links\n\
+ -n, --no-dereference treat LINK_NAME as a normal file if\n\
+ it is a symbolic link to a directory\n\
-P, --physical make hard links directly to symbolic links\n\
-s, --symbolic make symbolic links instead of hard links\n\
"), stdout);
@@ -373,7 +374,7 @@ Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
options too.\n\
-S, --suffix=SUFFIX override the usual backup suffix\n\
-t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY specify the DIRECTORY in which to create\n\
the links\n\
- -T, --no-target-directory treat LINK_NAME as a normal file\n\
+ -T, --no-target-directory treat LINK_NAME as a normal file always\n\
-v, --verbose print name of each linked file\n\
"), stdout);
fputs (HELP_OPTION_DESCRIPTION, stdout);
- bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity, Jim Meyering, 2011/11/19
- Message not available
- Message not available
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Michael J Daniel, 2011/11/20
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Jim Meyering, 2011/11/20
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity),
Paul Eggert <=
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Jim Meyering, 2011/11/20
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Paul Eggert, 2011/11/20
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Jim Meyering, 2011/11/21
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Voelker, Bernhard, 2011/11/21
- bug#9896: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#9896: ln man page ambiguity), Bob Proulx, 2011/11/20