On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Christoph Biedl <debian.a...@manchmal.in-ulm.de> wrote: >> If POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set in the environment then the documentation >> in "file --help" describing the -L argument as "(default)" is not true. > > How?
This is all a bit moot since we're discussing a bug in file-5.11 which is no longer present in 5.14. But since you asked: I don't have POSIXLY_CORRECT set to anything or the empty string. The problem is just that `file --help' says 04:53:18 dave@bb:/t/a$ file --help | grep default -L, --dereference follow symlinks (default) 04:59:15 dave@bb:/t/a$ POSIXLY_CORRECT=yes file --help | grep default -L, --dereference follow symlinks (default) but behaves as though -h is the default... except when POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined, in which case the help text is correct. 04:52:41 dave@bb:/t/a$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 dave dave 0 Jul 2 04:52 empty lrwxrwxrwx 1 dave dave 5 Jul 2 04:52 link -> empty 04:52:42 dave@bb:/t/a$ file --version file-5.11 magic file from /etc/magic:/usr/share/misc/magic 04:52:54 dave@bb:/t/a$ file link link: symbolic link to `empty' 04:53:00 dave@bb:/t/a$ file -h link link: symbolic link to `empty' 04:53:15 dave@bb:/t/a$ file -L link link: empty In 5.14 the help text is changed to in just such a way as to mention this behavior. If Debian is sticking with 5.11 for a while then you might want to backport this: 04:54:17 dave@Vger:/t/a$ file --help | grep default -L, --dereference follow symlinks (default if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set) -h, --no-dereference don't follow symlinks (default if POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set) Dave
