Are links as useful as they could be?

[Chris Torek]

>In article <21127 at rochester.ARPA> ken at rochester.UUCP (Comfy chair) writes:
>>There still is obviously a need for some kind of indirection mechanism.
>>I don't like symbolic links, there are some warts, like having to check
>>for looping, but I can't think of anything better.

In article <65 at its63b.ed.ac.uk> simon at its63b.ed.ac.uk (Simon Brown) writes:
>The "check for looping" could be fixed for symbolic links by defining
>some primitive that converts a filename into the filename that it
>"really is" ....

All you have done is to move the check from namei() into this new
primitive.

If you are willing to expend large amounts of space, the symlink
loop checks can be made rigorous, e.g., by remembering each symlink
inode and requiring that no one appear twice.  The eight-links
limit seems to work well in practice, though, particularly since
symlinks slow name translation markedly.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu