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Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Re: [Cs323] Symbolic Links
Date: Wednesday, 09 Sep 2020, 15:07:34


    > Message Posted By: Unknown
    >
    > When finding loops in symbolic links,
    >
    > what is the inode number referring to?
    >
    > Is that the the inode of the "target file" that the symbolic link is
    > pointing to, or is it of the "pointer file" that has a symbolic link going
    > to a target file or something else?

Suppose that fiend is traversing the tree rooted at S,
where S is a directory that contains a symbolic link T
to ../S.

Under -P fiend visits S and then S/T, evaluating
EXPRESSION at each file.

Under -L it first visits S, but when it tries to visit
S/T it reaches S again instead.  Since the inode number
associated with S/T is the same as that associated with
S, it sees that there is a loop and issues a warning
message rather than evaluating EXPRESSION.
=====

    > After we find a symbolic link loop, do we need to store the inode number
    > again? Or should we only store the inodes of files that don't create a
    > symbolic loop.

You need to store the inode numbers for all files on the
path from the root of the traversal to the current file.

--Stan-
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