Re: links in pathnames under Windows 8

First of all, howdy and welcome to the Monastery, meistersinger! (Nice username, BTW.)

I've just looked into this for a bit on a windows 7 box, using Strawberry 5.20.0, and I've found that links (to directories) appear to only be recognized and handled properly when two conditions are met:

The source and target of the link share the same name.
The target of the link is not a "localized" directory.

Following a link from e.g. C:\Users\AppleFritter\Desktop\Games to C:\Games works; the former exists (-e), is seen as a directory (-d), and can be opendir'ed. Changing the link's name to e.g. C:\Users\AppleFritter\Desktop\MoreGames causes it to cease working.

OTOH, following a link from e.g. C:\Users\AppleFritter\Desktop\Users to C:\Users does not work. (I should note that this is a localized version of windows, albeit configured to use English as its system language; maybe an unlocalized English version wouldn't have this problem.)

All this remains true when running as an Administrator, BTW, so I don't think it's a permissions problem.

I don't know whether this indicates a bug in perl, windows, or both. My suggestion would be to just work around this; the easiest solution might be to make sure you don't need to follow any links in the first place. Perhaps shuffle the data around on your external drive as necessary, if that's an option.

Comment on Re: links in pathnames under Windows 8

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Re^2: links in pathnames under Windows 8 by meistersinger (Initiate) on Oct 21, 2014 at 17:30 UTC
Thank you for the welcome! Sorry for the delay -- family problems mostly due to an errant grand-daughter. (The username comes about because I was a musician before I found that computing paid better, and I like the works or Richard Wagner.) I finally came back to this problem last week, because the SD card was full, followed your suggestion and continued with the above code. I'll experiment with the other suggestions when I have time. Thank you for your help.	[reply]

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Re^2: links in pathnames under Windows 8
by meistersinger (Initiate) on Oct 21, 2014 at 17:30 UTC

Thank you for the welcome! Sorry for the delay -- family problems mostly due to an errant grand-daughter. (The username comes about because I was a musician before I found that computing paid better, and I like the works or Richard Wagner.)

I finally came back to this problem last week, because the SD card was full, followed your suggestion and continued with the above code. I'll experiment with the other suggestions when I have time.

Thank you for your help.

[reply]