How do I copy symbolic links in Perl?

perl, symlink

Solution

In Perl you can use the `readlink()` function to find out the destination of a symlink.

You can also use the `lstat()` function to read the permissions of the symlink (as opposed to `stat()` which will read the details of the file pointed to by the symlink).

Actually setting the ownership on the new symlink can't be done without extra help as Perl doesn't expose the `lchown()` system call. For that you can use the Perl `Lchown` module from CPAN.

Assuming sufficient permissions (nb: unchecked code)

 use Lchown;
 my $old_link = 'path to the symlink';
 my $new_link = 'path to the copy';

 my $dst = readlink($old_link);
 my @stat = lstat($old_link);

 symlink $dst, $new_link;
 lchown $stat[4], $stat[5], $new_link;  # set UID and GID from the lstat() results

You don't need to worry about the permissions on the symlink - they always appear as `-rwxrwxrwx`

Problem

How do I copy a symbolic link (and not the file it points to) in a Perl program while preserving all of the symbolic link attributes (such as owner and permissions)?

Original source