(file-attributes "symlink/.")

[Paul Jarc]

The Elisp reference manual says:
 - Function: file-attributes FILENAME
     This function returns a list of attributes of file FILENAME.

But this isn't true.  If "symlink" is a symlink pointing to a
directory, then "symlink/." names the directory, not the symlink.
However, file-attributes still tells me about the symlink instead of
the directory.  So I have two questions:
0. Why does file-attributes work so hard to get in my way?
1. How can I work around this behavior?  I know I could look at the
   pointed-to name, build a new filename, and repeat until I ran out
   of symlinks, but the filesystem would do this for me if only
   file-attributes would cooperate.


paul