linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] readlink()-related oddities

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Date:	Thu, 19 Nov 2015 19:09:20 -0800
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Cc:	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	LSM List <linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org>,
	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu>,
	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC] readlink()-related oddities

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 6:57 PM, Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>
> How would those tools know that this particular pathname _is_ a magical
> symlink?

Like maybe just the AFS management tools? By design you'd only run
them on the mountpoint in question.

Not everything has to be "generic". Sometimes its' good enough to just
have the ability to get the work done.

Now, if it turns out that others also want to do this, maybe somebody
decides "let's add flag -V to 'ls', which forces a 'readlink()' on all
the targets, whether links or not, and shows the information".

I could imagine other special files having "a single line of
information about the file" that they'd expose with readlink(). Who
knows?

So there is *potential* for just making it generic, but that doesn't
mean that it necessarily has to act that way.

                Linus
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