* Sat 2003-06-14 Charles Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> list.cygwin-apps * Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Jari Aalto+mail.linux wrote: > >> Debian package 'chase' has been ported. Please review. >> >> http://www.tierra.dyndns.org:81/cygwin/chase >> >> > > How does this differ from namei, readlink, or realpath, all part of the > cygutils package? > > namei - follow a pathname until a terminal point is found > readlink - display target of symbolic link on standard output > realpath - Print PATH with all references to `.', `..', and symlinks > resolved.
Debian also has namei(1), readlink(1) and chase is one utility more. In 'chase', there are couple of interesting options: -f, --from-file Treat the file names on the command line as sources for names to be chased. If this option is present, chase will read in each of the files given on the command line (both a sole dash "-" and the absence of file names will be taken as meaning the standard input stream). Each line in the files is taken as a verbatim file name that will be chased like it had been given on the com- mand line of a run without this option. There is no means for quoting the newline character; therefore only file names that do not contain newlines can be specified via the files. This restriction is lifted by the -0 option, though. However, lit- eral spaces are preserved and are not interpreted as special. -D, --disable-loop-detection Normally chase keeps a record of all symlinks it has visited when chasing the current file. It uses this record to reliably detect symlink loops. However, checking the record slows the process a little (more for long chains of symlinks) and the record requires a small amount of memory (more for long chains of symlinks), so it may be desirable in some cases to inhibit this check. This option disables this loop detection and the associated recording of visited symlinks. When this option is in effect (assuming no bugs in the related code) chase runs in constant space and linear time relative to the length of the symlink chains encountered. Jari -- http://tiny-tools.sourceforge.net/ Swatch @time http://www.ryanthiessen.com/swatch/resources.htm Convert @time http://www.mir.com.my/iTime/itime.htm