[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
bug#17618: ls -l dangerous when listing links
From: |
Eric Blake |
Subject: |
bug#17618: ls -l dangerous when listing links |
Date: |
Wed, 28 May 2014 09:46:10 -0600 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0 |
tag 17618 wontfix
thanks
On 05/28/2014 07:36 AM, Michał Adamczyk wrote:
> Call it a bug or call it a feature. It is dangerous though.
>
> When using `ls -l` to list a directory with links in it, it will produce
> an output similar to this:
>
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group 30 1980-01-01 00:01 link_name ->
> /path/to/destination/file
>
> Since the output is empty, you'll get the target of that link
> overwritten with an empty file.
>
> My suggestion is to change the representation symbols of link to
> something that won't get interpreted.
The use of "->" is required by POSIX:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/ls.html
>> If the file is a symbolic link and the -L option is not specified, this
>> information shall be about the link itself and the <pathname> field shall be
>> of the form:
>>
>> "%s -> %s", <pathname of link>, <contents of link>
>>
So we can't change it unless we add a NEW option; but adding a new
option means that it won't be available by default.
There have been suggestions in the past about using a UTF-8 arrow, but
they have similarly been rejected. Sorry.
I'm closing this report, because we can't do anything about it; but feel
free to add further comments.
--
Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature