Re: awk inplace overrides symlinks

[arnold]

I think I'm convinced to leave things alone.  Perhaps it'd
make sense to add a few words in the manual and in the man page.

Tim, would you care to submit a patch here?

Thanks,

Arnold

Tim Rice <trice@posteo.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> >so maybe there's something to be said for consistency across the various
> >tools?
>
> I agree with this, and there are a couple more arguments in favor of keeping 
> the current behavior:
>
> * There could be more than one symlink to the same file, and it isn't clear 
> that changing the data at one location implies we want it changed everywhere. 
> Anyone who is sure that they want to make a universal change can use 
> `realpath /path/to/link | xargs awk -i inplace '{...}'` or so. I tested this 
> and it works fine.
>
> * People may already rely on the current behavior. For them, this would be a 
> breaking change. Of course there is a place in the world for introducing 
> backwards incompatible changes, when there are strong arguments for it. 
> However, the other points about consistency with sed and the ability to 
> include realpath in a pipeline weaken arguments for changing the current 
> behavior.
>
> ~ Tim