Problem with dereference option on Windows LNKs (shortcuts)

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003, Dan Mellem wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a folder that's full of shortcuts to other files (called
> 'shortcuts'). I'd like to interact with the original files instead of
> the shortcut (.lnk) files. Basically, if the shortcut is created from
> within CYGWIN (ln -s [whether CYGWIN=nowinsymlinks or winsymlinks]), the
> command:
>
> $ cp -LR shortcuts/ shortcuts2/
>
> will copy the original files (dereferencing the symbolic links).
> However, if the shortcut was created in MS-Windows, all I get is a copy
> of the shortcuts. The only difference between the MS LNKs and the Cygwin
> ones that I see, besides file size/layout, is that all the shortcuts are
> read-only. Doing an ATTRIB +R * in the directory didn't make a difference.
>
> This problem isn't specific to 'cp.' E.g., 'less' will work on an 'ln'
> shortcut but not a normal MS-Windows shortcut.
>
> I'm using Cygwin v1.3.22 (Mar 18, 2003) on MS-Windows 2000.
>
> Thanks for your help.
> -Dan

Dan,

Cygwin symlinks are a bit more than read-only shortcut (.lnk) files.
They have a special format, and they also have something in their
"Comment" field (that you can check via shortcut properties).  In short,
you cannot easily create a Cygwin symlink from outside Cygwin.  For exact
details, see the source of the symlink() function in
winsup/cygwin/path.cc.
	Igor
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