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From: Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com>
To: zsh-workers@zsh.org
Subject: Re: glob qualifier '-' doesn't work correctly on dangling symlinks
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2020 13:48:43 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <b765592b89c3e63c3535f42f413c99c5f29de66f.camel@ntlworld.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200411173450.56nnznxtmil5oge3@chazelas.org>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1141 bytes --]

On Sat, 2020-04-11 at 18:34 +0100, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
> 2020-04-11 17:15:11 +0200, Vincent Lefevre:
> [...]
> > +zsh:10> ls -l file3
> > lrwxrwxrwx 1 lefevre lefevre 5 2008-12-28 22:34:28 file3 -> file0
> > 
> > file*(-W) should have no matches.
> 
> [...]
> 
> It is not really documented but kind of implied that on broken
> symlinks, after -, we're still looking at the symlink instead of
> the target (there's no target for us to look at anyway).
> 
> The manual has:
> 
> >      ls -ld -- *(-@)
> > 
> > lists all broken symbolic links, and

Yes, it's already implicit and useful that this is how it works; I use
it myself.  We should document it better.  The current form is ambiguous
--- "the file it refers to" is meaningless if it doesn't refer to a
file.

We certainly can't change this at this stage, but that wouldn't stop us
adding something with alternative behaviour.

For convenience, the proposed wording in the attached is

item(tt(-))(
toggles between making the qualifiers work on symbolic links (the
default) and the files they point to, if any; a broken symbolic link
is treated as a file in its own right
)

pws

[-- Attachment #2: broken_symlinks.dif --]
[-- Type: text/x-patch, Size: 486 bytes --]

diff --git a/Doc/Zsh/expn.yo b/Doc/Zsh/expn.yo
index 2a66ab997..fd1f1ca3b 100644
--- a/Doc/Zsh/expn.yo
+++ b/Doc/Zsh/expn.yo
@@ -2837,7 +2837,8 @@ negates all qualifiers following it
 )
 item(tt(-))(
 toggles between making the qualifiers work on symbolic links (the
-default) and the files they point to
+default) and the files they point to, if any; a broken symbolic link
+is treated as a file in its own right
 )
 item(tt(M))(
 sets the tt(MARK_DIRS) option for the current pattern

  parent reply	other threads:[~2020-04-12 12:49 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-04-11 15:15 Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-11 17:34 ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-11 19:17   ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-11 20:37     ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-11 23:48       ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-12  1:21         ` Daniel Shahaf
2020-04-12  2:17           ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-12  7:09             ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-12 14:25               ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-12 17:34                 ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-12 23:38                   ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-13 14:22                     ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-13 15:00                       ` Bart Schaefer
2020-04-13 21:41                       ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-14  6:18                         ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-14 12:02                           ` Daniel Shahaf
2020-04-14 12:38                             ` Stephane Chazelas
2020-04-15  0:44                               ` Daniel Shahaf
2020-04-15  9:17                                 ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-14 17:59                           ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-12 12:48   ` Peter Stephenson [this message]
2020-04-12 14:31     ` Vincent Lefevre
2020-04-12 15:49       ` Peter Stephenson
2020-04-12 23:07         ` Vincent Lefevre

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