ls dangling symlink

Version:

7.6 (fixed in 8.0)

How it is diagnosed (reproduced or source analysis)?

We couldn’t reproduce the failure, so we just analyzed the source code. .

Symptom:

Wrong result.

ls -Lis prints “0” for a dangling symlink. It should print “?”.

In addition, it will print an error msg: “cannot access”.

Root cause:

stat failed, but didn’t handle the failed stat properly.

gobble_file (.. ){

  err = stat (absolute_name, &f->stat);        ← detect error!

  if (err != 0)

   {

     // the error message below will be printed!

     /* Failure to stat a command line argument leads to

        an exit status of 2.  For other files, stat failure

        provokes an exit status of 1.  */

    file_failure (command_line_arg,

              _("cannot access %s"), absolute_name);          

    if (command_line_arg)        ← command_line_arg = false

        return 0;

    f->name = xstrdup (name);

    cwd_n_used++;        

    return 0;

   }

   f->stat_ok = true;        ← f_stat_ok is not set

}

/* Here is where the “0” is printed by human_readable (ST_NBLOCKS (f->stat)..). Here f->stat_ok equals to 0. The fix is to add an additional check for f->stat_ok, and in this case, print “?”. */

print_file_name_and_frills ( … ) {        

 if (print_block_size)        

   printf ("%*s ", format == with_commas ? 0 : block_size_width,

+        ! f->stat_ok ? "?" :

        human_readable (ST_NBLOCKS (f->stat), buf, human_output_opts,

                     ST_NBLOCKSIZE, output_block_size));

}

Is there Error Message?

Yes.

Can Errlog automatically insert the error message?

Yes. System error return pattern.