Re: Recursion level of symlinks limitted to five?

Cameron Simpson (cs@zip.com.au)
Wed, 10 Mar 1999 23:25:23 +0000

| > Argh. Overuse of symlinks is certainly bad, but a chain limit of 5 is
| > mega-overly-conservative.
| If you go an solve a big problem by breaking down the task into
| smaller pieces which in turn can recursively break themself down
| into smaller pieces you quite naturally end up with a situation
| where you need a bigger number of recursions in symlinks. From
| my point of via a statement like saying that recursive symlinks
| are not a good programming style does not reflect much of good
| programming practice.

I didn't say that. I was just commenting that symlinks are easy to
abuse (certainly in today's world they're often used instead of hard
links without good reason, and since they "break" when you move their target
a hard link is often a better choice).

Ending up with a recursive problem solution isn't inherently bad, but
if that form of solution leads to winding down a limit to something
silly then that's a clue that in this instance another solution is
probably worth seeking.

--
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743        cs@zip.com.au        http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/


I'd be careful who you call smart or not smart. Smart isn't knowing how to
save six bytes. Smart is knowing WHEN. - Peter Cherna, Amiga O.S. Development


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