[bug #19605] find does not report symlink loop when trying to follow symlinks

[James Youngman]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #19605 (project findutils):

Thinking about this again, I am less convinced this is a bug.  AIUI find is
required to diagnose directory loops.  The standard says:

<< The find utility shall detect infinite loops; that is, entering a
previously visited directory that is an ancestor of the last file
encountered. When it detects an infinite loop, find shall write a diagnostic
message to standard error and shall either recover its position in the
hierarchy or terminate. >>

In this case however, neither a nor b point to a directory and hence do not
constitute a directory loop.  Therefore it is not obvious to me that
findutils is obliged to diagnose anything.  If you include a predicate which
requires stat() to succeed, a diagnosis is made:

orbital:tmp$ ../find --version | head -1
GNU find version 4.3.3
orbital:tmp$ /bin/ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 james users 1 2007-04-17 08:39 a -> b
lrwxrwxrwx 1 james users 1 2007-04-17 08:39 b -> a
orbital:tmp$ ../find -L
.
./a
./b
orbital:tmp$ ../find -L -size 2
../find: ./a: Too many levels of symbolic links
../find: ./b: Too many levels of symbolic links
orbital:tmp$ echo $?
1

(I just tested this on NetBSD also, and there was a failure which I am about
to log as a separate bug)


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