changing gzip's symlink handling to be consistent with bzip2, xz and GNU gzipy

[Alexander Best]

On Mon Nov 15 10, Xin LI wrote:
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> Hi,
> 
> On 11/15/10 10:24, Alexander Best wrote:
> > hi there,
> > 
> > any thoughts on this patch? it changes the semantics of gzip so that it is
> > consistent with the semantics of bzip2, xz and for more important GNU gzip.
> 
> Could you please elaborate more about the GNU gzip behavior?
> 
> By the way I also found some difference between BSD gzip and GNU gzip:
> 
> touch foo
> ln -s foo.nonexistent foo.gz
> 
> gzip foo
> gzip: could not create output: foo.gz: File exists
> 
> /usr/local/bin/gzip foo
> gzip: foo.gz already exists; do you wish to overwrite (y or n)? ^C
> (case 1)

^^ confirmed!
> 
> echo | /usr/local/bin/gzip foo
> gzip: foo.gz already exists;	not overwritten

^^ this is only the GNU output. however bsd gzip seems to behave the same
> 
> gzip -f foo
> gzip: could not create output: foo.gz: File exists
> 
> /usr/local/bin/gzip -f foo
> (succeeded; case 2).

^^ confirmed!

it appears the designers of BSD gzip did not take symbolic links into account.

cheers.
alex

> 
> 
> Cheers,
> - -- 
> Xin LI <delphij at delphij.net>	http://www.delphij.net/
> FreeBSD - The Power to Serve!	       Live free or die
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a13x