Committed attached patch as rev. 226923 to document the behavior of gfortran
when opening & closing symbolic links.
Clearing up some of the old libgfortran PRs...
FX
Index: ChangeLog
===================================================================
--- ChangeLog (revision 226922)
+++ ChangeLog (working copy)
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2015-08-16 Francois-Xavier Coudert <fxcoud...@gcc.gnu.org>
+
+ PR fortran/41387
+ * gfortran.texi: New section "File operations on symbolic links".
+
2015-08-08 Francois-Xavier Coudert <fxcoud...@gcc.gnu.org>
PR fortran/67059
Index: gfortran.texi
===================================================================
--- gfortran.texi (revision 226894)
+++ gfortran.texi (working copy)
@@ -1140,6 +1140,7 @@ might in some way or another become visi
* Thread-safety of the runtime library::
* Data consistency and durability::
* Files opened without an explicit ACTION= specifier::
+* File operations on symbolic links::
@end menu
@@ -1345,6 +1346,33 @@ processor dependent. GNU Fortran behave
@end enumerate
+@node File operations on symbolic links
+@section File operations on symbolic links
+@cindex file, symbolic link
+
+This section documents the behavior of GNU Fortran for file operations on
+symbolic links, on systems that support them.
+
+@itemize
+
+@item Results of INQUIRE statements of the ``inquire by file'' form will
+relate to the target of the symbolic link. For example,
+@code{INQUIRE(FILE="foo",EXIST=ex)} will set @var{ex} to @var{.true.} if
+@var{foo} is a symbolic link pointing to an existing file, and @var{.false.}
+if @var{foo} points to an non-existing file (``dangling'' symbolic link).
+
+@item Using the @code{OPEN} statement with a @code{STATUS="NEW"} specifier
+on a symbolic link will result in an error condition, whether the symbolic
+link points to an existing target or is dangling.
+
+@item If a symbolic link was connected, using the @code{CLOSE} statement
+with a @code{STATUS="DELETE"} specifier will cause the symbolic link itself
+to be deleted, not its target.
+
+@end itemize
+
+
+
@c ---------------------------------------------------------------------
@c Extensions
@c ---------------------------------------------------------------------
