Hi Eric, I think that you might misunderstood my point.
> The current wording in the manual (that is, the info pages) is: > > `Canonicalize mode' > `readlink' outputs the absolute name of the given file which > contains no `.', `..' components nor any repeated separators (`/') > or symbolic links. > > `-f' > `--canonicalize' > Activate canonicalize mode. If any component of the file name > except the last one is missing or unavailable, `readlink' produces > no output and exits with a nonzero exit code. A trailing slash is > ignored. So the info is not clear either for the case where the argument is not a symbolic link. Therefore, both info and man (at least info, if people think man should kept short while sacrificing some clarity) can be improved. > I'm not quite sure I see what you are asking to be changed. It appears that ~/linux/test/gnu/gnu/coreutils/readlink$ ll a.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 pengy staff 0 2011-11-04 11:08:27 a.txt ~/linux/test/gnu/gnu/coreutils/readlink$ readlink a.txt ~/linux/test/gnu/gnu/coreutils/readlink$ readlink -f a.txt /Users/pengy/linux/test/gnu/gnu/coreutils/readlink/a.txt Do you see that neither man nor info covers the above case now? Note that without -f, nothing is printed for the file a.txt. > At this point, patches might speak louder than words. You are welcome to > submit a patch against readlink.c that improves the --help wording, or > against coreutils.texi to improve the info wording; remember that it is > intentionally a goal of the --help output to be concise, while the info > documentation should be complete. I don't have setup for updating the source code and I am not planning to do so. All I can do is to give suggestions if they are welcome. I'm sure that any one with a setup can update these suggested changes on the man page and help fairly easily. -- Regards, Peng
