Actually the behavior is even stranger... renaming and then deleting junctions creates spurious directories.
echo "This is a test file" >| targetfile mkdir targetdir echo "This is a test dir file" >| targetdir/targetdirfile junction.exe junctionfile targetfile junction.exe junctiondir targetdir ls -Ag drwxr-xr-x 1 None 0 2009-11-09 11:56 junctiondir/ -rw-r--r-- 1 None 20 2009-11-09 11:55 junctionfile drwxr-xr-x 1 None 0 2009-11-09 11:56 targetdir/ -rw-r--r-- 1 None 20 2009-11-09 11:55 targetfile mv junctionfile newjunctionfile mv junctiondir newjunctiondir ls -Ag drwxr-xr-x 1 ???????? 0 2009-11-09 11:57 junctiondir/ drwxr-xr-x 1 ???????? 0 2009-11-09 11:57 junctionfile/ drwxr-xr-x 1 None 0 2009-11-09 11:56 newjunctiondir/ -rw-r--r-- 1 None 20 2009-11-09 11:55 newjunctionfile junction.exe -d junctionfile junction.exe -d junctiondir ls -Ag drwxr-xr-x 1 None 0 2009-11-09 11:56 newjunctiondir/ -rw-r--r-- 1 None 20 2009-11-09 11:55 newjunctionfile drwx------+ 1 None 0 2009-11-09 12:01 targetdir/ drwx------+ 1 None 0 2009-11-09 12:01 targetfile/ Now this seems to be sheer madness. The original file and directory names have reappeared! However 'targetdir' is now empty and 'targetfile' is also an (empty) directory! ls -Ag targetdir targetfile newjunctiondir newjunctiondir: total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 None 24 2009-11-09 11:56 targetdirfile targetdir: total 0 Interestingly, in Windows explorer, renaming seems to do the right thing - it renames the target. Interestingly, Windows explorer allows both file and directory junctions to be removed (though it displays file junctions as non-openable directories). Not sure why it does this since I thought junctions could only be deleted using '-d'. So it seems to me, we have the following conclusions: - cygwin treatment of junctions is not consistent with Windows or with notion of symlinks. It also leaves weird residua after renaming junctions. - Windows junctions are also messed up but not as much targetfile: total 0 -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Finding-junction-points-in-cygwin-tp26260606p26270112.html Sent from the Cygwin list mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple