Re: symlink chain.

[Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com>]

On Sat, 03 Jan 2015 13:13:16 -0800
Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca> wrote:
> Conversely, the man page could
> explain that -m and -a are incompatible with full path filenames, but 
> that's not going to happen either.

There's no reason not to document what the basic intention of whence is,
to avoid people doing dodgy experiments with dodgy results.  The key
hint at the moment is where it says it indicates how the argument would
be used as a command *name*, which sort of implies full paths aren't
very useful, but it doesn't actually spell this out.

diff --git a/Doc/Zsh/builtins.yo b/Doc/Zsh/builtins.yo
index b4f4b67..49c2c11 100644
--- a/Doc/Zsh/builtins.yo
+++ b/Doc/Zsh/builtins.yo
@@ -2087,6 +2087,11 @@ item(tt(whence) [ tt(-vcwfpamsS) ] var(name) ...)(
 For each name, indicate how it would be interpreted if used as a
 command name.
 
+tt(whence) is most useful when var(name) is only the last path component
+of a command, i.e. does not include a `tt(/)'; in particular, pattern
+matching only succeeds if just the non-directory component of the command is
+passed.
+
 startitem()
 item(tt(-v))(
 Produce a more verbose report.
@@ -2119,7 +2124,7 @@ throughout the command path.
 Normally only the first occurrence is printed.
 )
 item(tt(-m))(
-The arguments are taken as patterns (should be
+The arguments are taken as patterns (pattern characters should be
 quoted), and the information is displayed for each command matching one
 of these patterns.
 )

pws