Re: Feature Request: make sane symlinks on remote host.

[Kai Großjohann]

Steve Youngs <address@hidden> writes:

> (make-symbolic-link "/address@hidden/path/file" 
>                     "/path/symlink")
>   => FILENAME -> remote;  LINKNAME -> local
>
> (make-symbolic-link "/path/file" 
>                     "/address@hidden/path/symlink")
>   => FILENAME -> local;  LINKNAME -> remote
>
> (make-symbolic-link "/address@hidden/path/file" 
>                     "/address@hidden/path/symlink")
>   => FILENAME -> remote;  LINKNAME -> remote

The current implementation produces something strange (an error,
perhaps) for the first case, and it creates a symlink pointing from
the file /address@hidden/path/symlink to the file /address@hidden/path/file
in the other two cases.

For the other two cases, this means that logging in as address@hidden,
then doing "ls -l /path/symlink" will show something like
"symlink -> /path/file" in the current implementation.

I think you want the behavior for the first case to differ: you want
the first statement to have the same effect as the third statement.

I disagree with both the current implementation and with your
suggestion (or what I think your suggestion is).  In my opinion,
after calling make-symbolic-link with "STRING" as the first argument,
"ls -l" should *always* print "foo -> STRING", regardless of what
characters STRING contains.  So if STRING is "/][][@@@address@hidden", then the
"ls -l" output should be "foo -> /][][@@@address@hidden".  Only when
_following_ the symlink is it interpreted as a filename, relative to
the source of the symlink.  This would be aligned with the spirit of
the "ls -s" command in Unix, in my opinion.

kai
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