Ah the magic of using a mailing list... I just realized that using getDirectoryContents lists the entry. Still, a "doesLinkExist" function might be nice... On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 11:46 PM, Nicolas Frisby wrote:

I think I've exhausted my options without catching exceptions.

If I have an invalid symbolic link, how can I identify that it exists?

(Sorry about the line wrap.)

tmp$ ls -l # no tricks up my sleeve, empty directory tmp$ touch foo tmp$ ln -s foo bar tmp$ ls -l total 8 lrwxr-xr-x 1 nfrisby nfrisby 3 Aug 27 23:29 bar -> foo -rw-r--r-- 1 nfrisby nfrisby 0 Aug 27 23:29 foo tmp$ ghc -e 'System.Directory.doesFileExist "bar"' True tmp$ rm foo tmp$ ls -l total 8 lrwxr-xr-x 1 nfrisby nfrisby 3 Aug 27 23:29 bar -> foo tmp$ ghc -e 'System.Directory.doesFileExist "bar"' # it follows the broken link False tmp$ ghc -e 'System.Posix.Files.fileExist "bar"' # the POSIX API also follows False tmp$ ghc -e 'System.Posix.Files.isSymbolicLink `fmap` System.Posix.Files.getFileStatus "bar"' # so does this one POSIX API also follows *** Exception: bar: getFileStatus: does not exist (No such file or directory) tmp$ ghc -e 'System.Posix.Files.isSymbolicLink `fmap` System.Posix.Files.getSymbolicLinkStatus "bar"' # the most successful so far True tmp$ rm bar # but it isn't an existence check... tmp$ ls -l tmp$ ghc -e 'System.Posix.Files.isSymbolicLink `fmap` System.Posix.Files.getSymbolicLinkStatus "bar"' *** Exception: bar: getSymbolicLinkStatus: does not exist (No such file or directory)

Is there a way to check for the existence of a symbolic link without testing if getSymbolicLinkStatus raises an exception?

This is with Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.1, GHC 6.8.2, directory-1.0.0.0, and unix-2.3.0.0.

Thanks.