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Re: dirent.d_type is not working on Cygwin symbolic links.


Am 29.01.2017 um 20:17 schrieb waterlan:
Christian Franke schreef op 2017-01-29 12:15:
waterlan wrote:
The dirent.d_type value for Cygwin symbolic links is 0 (DT_UNKNOWN). The value is 10 (DT_LNK) for Windows native symbolic links. I think d_type should be 10 for Cygwin symbolic links too.


Sorry, no.

The actual type should only be returned in dirent.d_type if the info
is available at very low cost. This is not the case for Cygwin
symbolic links.

If DT_UNKNOWN is returned, lstat() must be called if type info is required.

Quote from Linux man page readdir(3):
"All applications must properly handle a return of DT_UNKNOWN."
(https://linux.die.net/man/3/readdir)

See also thread starting at:
https://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin-patches/2008-q4/msg00000.html

In this case I do not agree with this. Cygwin symbolic links are there to emulate Linux symlinks. Therefore I expect the same behaviour.

``Cygwin is
* a large collection of GNU and Open Source tools which provide functionality similar to a Linux distribution on Windows.''
(https://cygwin.com/)
As you're quoting from the cygwin home page, you chose the wrong bullet. It's about tools while the functionality you are commenting about is provided by
* a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which provides substantial POSIX API functionality.
So the reference here is POSIX, not Linux, if we're getting picky. And as Christian Franke had already quoted, the field in question is not mandatory at all by POSIX. So you'll have to do what other people also do: defensive programming, not expecting too much but taking all cases into account.
------
Thomas

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