Re: Bug#149454: uudecode bug (?)

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Santiago Vila <address@hidden> [2002.07.09.1159 +0200]:
> > This I dig. However, other tools, like gunzip replace pipes and
> > symlinks rather than following them. So at the very least, it's not
> > standardized across GNU tools.
> 
> gzip is an exception, because it removes the original file when
> compressing a file, removes the .gz file when uncompressing it, and
> usually refuses to overwrite an uncompressed file or a compressed one
> if it already exists, but the general Unix rule is to follow symlinks.

tar -- which is much closer to uudecode than gzip -- exhibits the same
behaviour: it replaces an existing file, even if it's a symlink or
a pipe:

fishbowl% echo test > tar-link
fishbowl% echo test > tar-pipe
fishbowl% tar cf test.tar tar-*
fishbowl% echo not a test > a-file
fishbowl% ln -sf a-file tar-link
fishbowl% rm tar-pipe && mkfifo tar-pipe
fishbowl% ls -la tar-* a-file
-rw-r--r--    1 madduck  users          11 Jul  9 12:29 a-file
lrwxrwxrwx    1 madduck  users           6 Jul  9 12:30 tar-link -> a-file
prw-r--r--    1 madduck  users           0 Jul  9 12:30 tar-pipe
fishbowl% tar xf test.tar
fishbowl% ls -la tar-* a-file
-rw-r--r--    1 madduck  users          11 Jul  9 12:29 a-file
-rw-r--r--    1 madduck  users           5 Jul  9 12:29 tar-link
-rw-r--r--    1 madduck  users           5 Jul  9 12:29 tar-pipe

is tar also an exception? or is uudecode starting to become an
exception?

-- 
martin;              (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
  \____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:"; address@hidden
  
dazed and confused, but trying to continue.

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