The 'ln -s' command

[Joseph Koshy]

> I tried the 'ln -s' command in bothe 4.3  &  4.7  in a
> situation where it should fail and it did, but it still had
> a return/exit code of  0 , I think it should have been
> nonzero.  I tried 'ln -s  a  b' where the file  b  existed
> (and was a directory) and I wanted to create the file named
> a  also pointing to it.  The correct form was 'ln -s  b  a'.


> FreeBSD  4.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE #0: Sat Apr 21 \
  10:54:49 GMT 2001    \
  jkh at narf.osd.bsdi.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC  i386

> FreeBSD  4.7-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE #0: Wed Oct  9 \
  15:08:34 GMT 2002     \
  root at builder.freebsdmall.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC \
  i386

I don't have a 4.3 or 4.7 box, but on 4.11 I see:

 $ ls a.out
 a.out
 $ ln -s foo a.out
 ln: a.out: File exists
 $ echo $?
 1

Are you really running /bin/ln?  Do you run other programs
at the time of displaying your PS1 prompt?

-- 
FreeBSD Developer,     http://people.freebsd.org/~jkoshy