Re: [boost] Filesystem: remove_all should not follow symlinks

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-24 11:00:51

Beman Dawes wrote:
> At 05:53 PM 11/21/2003, Peter Dimov wrote:

[about reference counted links]

>> It doesn't make sense to talk about shallow or deep semantics here.
>
> That's usually correct, but there are a few query operations where the
> shallow/deep issue might matter, depending on the operating system.
> Size/date/time being examples.

Do you have a specific OS in mind? Size is a particularly interesting
example. ;-)

>> A symbolic link is a special kind of directory entry that points to
another
>> directory entry.
>
> That's correct for POSIX, if I understand the POSIX docs correctly.
>
> But on NTFS (and perhaps other Windows file systems) it gets much
> murkier. The feature roughly equivalent to a POSIX symbolic link is
> the shortcut file (with an extension of .lnk, although you can add
additional
> extensions via the registry).

>From C++ point of view it is reasonable to consider a symlink something that
when passed to std::fopen actually opens another file. Under this definition
.lnk does not appear to be a symlink.