Re: glob qualifier '-' doesn't work correctly on dangling symlinks

[Vincent Lefevre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2020-04-11 21:37:14 +0100, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
> 2020-04-11 21:17:11 +0200, Vincent Lefevre:
> [...]
> > > That's consistent with GNU find's -xtype l
> > 
> > But the behavior is not consistent with the stat system call, with
> > the GNU stat utility (when using the --dereference option), and with
> > zsh/stat.
> [...]
> 
> But ls/stat report information, and find/globs find files.

Globs find files based on reported information.

> find -xtype l and *(-@) are common, documented idioms. If only
> for that, I don't think the behaviour should be changed.
> 
> And it's not clear what the better behaviour would be.
> 
> If that broken link should not be matched by *(-W), should it be
> matched by *(-^W)? Why?

No, just like file0(^W) gives "zsh: no match" (as file0 does not exist).

> Or should that fail the glob (cause the shell process to exit)?

The shell process should not exit (except with "set -e").
The behavior should be: replace the link by the target, then
apply the glob qualifiers.

> What about for *(-e:code:)?

Since file0(e:foo:) does not make zsh execute foo, *(-e:code:) should
execute the code only on existing (and accessible) targets.

> Here, you can always work around the problem with *(-W^@).

But file3(-e:foo:^@) will execute "foo". That's not equivalent.
I suppose that the form *(-^@^W) is the generic way to do it.

However, currently, the behavior does not match the documentation.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)