[ python-Bugs-1682940 ] os.walk should traverse outward symlinks

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Bugs item #1682940, was opened at 2007-03-18 02:42
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by gbrandl
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Category: Python Library
Group: None
>Status: Closed
>Resolution: Out of Date
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Tasci Synx (synx13)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: os.walk should traverse outward symlinks

Initial Comment:
To my dismay, I discovered that os.walk will ignore all symlinks, even symlinks that link to somewhere outside of the directory being walked. So I made a little patch to os.py, I hope you apply it, or some figment thereof.

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>Comment By: Georg Brandl (gbrandl)
Date: 2007-03-18 08:19

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The detection of "outward" symlinks is unreliable because there may be a
link there which links "back" into the walked hierarchy.
For 2.6, os.walk already has a "followlinks" keyword argument, which will
follow *all* symlinks. You can easily restrict them by removing them from
the "dirs" list yielded to the caller.

Closing as outdated.
IMO, the one thing that could be improved is to have a cache of visited
directories, and to not visit one if it's in the cache.

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You can respond by visiting: 
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