Re: max symlink = 5? ?bug? ?feature deficit?

[Al Viro]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 09:03:31AM +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> Hi Arjan,
> 
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 08:48:15AM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > 
> > > I don't know exactly why recursion is used to follow symlinks,
> > > which at first thought seems like it could be iterated, but
> > > I've not checked the code, there certainly are specific reasons
> > > for this.
> > 
> > the problem is not following symlinks. the problem is symlinks to
> > symlink to symlink to ...
> 
> That's how I understood it, but I only thought about easy cases. Now,
> I can imagine cross-FS links and I don't see an easy way to resolve
> them :-/

The real problem is that there is no promise that resolution of a symlink
consists of following some path.  It's a very common case, all right,
but not the only one.  And trying to take that into account makes iterative
schemes very ugly.
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