[cs615asa] [CS615] Handling Symbolic Links

[Jan Schaumann]

Patrick C Murray <pmurray1 at stevens.edu> wrote:
> How should symbolic links be handled in HW6?

You wouldn't need to worry - tar(1) will do the right thing:

If the argument given is a symlink and you do not append the '/', then
tar(1) will only copy that one file (of type symlink).

If the argument given is a symlink to a directory and you do append '/',
then tar(1) will indirect through the symlink and process the
directory.

If the argument is a directory and it contains symlinks, then tar(1)
will copy them as a file of type symlink, as it should.

This hopefully makes sense and should not violate the principle of least
astonishment.  That is, this is the behaviour that a user most likely
expects, and that matches the behaviour of other unix tools.

-Jan