Symlink file size

Ken Brown kbrown@cornell.edu
Wed Mar 8 04:05:00 GMT 2017


On 3/7/2017 10:37 PM, Steven Penny wrote:
> Cygwin seems to have no way to print an accurate size of a symlink.
> Consider
> this command:
>
>    $ touch alfa.txt
>    $ CYGWIN= ln -s alfa.txt bravo.txt
>
> Now cmd.exe can print the correct size just fine:
>
>    > dir /AS
>    2017-03-07  09:26 PM                30 bravo.txt
>
> However Cygwin prints incorrect 8 bytes with ls:
>
>    $ ls -l
>    total 2
>    -rw-r--r-- 1 Steven None 0 Mar  7 21:26 alfa.txt
>    lrwxrwxrwx 1 Steven None 8 Mar  7 21:26 bravo.txt -> alfa.txt

8 is the length of the file name "alfa.txt".  From 
https://linux.die.net/man/2/stat:  "The size of a symbolic link is the 
length of the pathname it contains, without a terminating null byte."

Ken

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