Re: Wrong behavior of ``readlink -f''?

[Jim Meyering]

Thomas Schwinge <address@hidden> wrote:
> $ readlink -f a/../a/f
> $ echo $?
> 1
...
> readlink (GNU coreutils) 5.97
>
> Why doesn't it resolve the latter case just as the previous ones?
> Because there are two symbolic links involved?  Or two times the same
> one?  Strange.

Thanks for the report.
That's because the code concluded it had encountered a cycle.
The bug was fixed for coreutils-6.9.90 via a change to gnulib's
canonicalize module.

Regarding your attempt to build from checked-out sources,
you might want to try the latest stable release:

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.announce/44
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.10.tar.gz
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.10.tar.lzma

or a snapshot (post-6.10) tarball:

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.bugs/12611