Let me see if I have this straight. The directory is on a Unix filesystem. It is mounted from Windows (probably through samba). And you want to know whether your Perl scripts on Windows can handle symbolic links properly?

If that is the question, then the answer is only partly. Your Windows scripts will be able to open documents and follow directories through the symbolic links just fine. However your Windows scripts can only access and manipulate the information available through the Windows filesystem, and since Windows filesystems have no concept of a symbolic link, the Unix system can't tell Windows about them, and if you try to tell Windows to tell Unix to create one, you will just confuse Windows.

In other words, Windows is the weakest link. The only things you can communicate between your script and Unix are things that Windows can understand. Windows can understand files and directories, but not symbolic links, so Windows sees symbolic links as regular files and directories.

(Note that this goes the other way as well, for instance from Unix you cannot manipulate some of the Windows file permissioning attributes simply because Windows NT/2000/XP supports some concepts that Unix does not understand.)

In reply to Re: soft links by tilly
in thread soft links by moked

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.