Bug #68167 [Com]: Can't create a relative symlink without changing dir

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=68167&edit=1 ID: 68167 Comment by: nathan dot renniewaldock at gmail dot com Reported by: nathan dot renniewaldock at gmail dot com Summary: Can't create a relative symlink without changing dir Status: Not a bug Type: Bug Package: Filesystem function related Operating System: Windows 7 PHP Version: 5.4.33 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: You appear to have misunderstood the report. Attempting to create a relative link without the working directory being where the link is being placed will always fail because it's resolving the target file from the working directory, not the directory the link will be in (which is how Windows resolves them). From my example, symlink() is trying to find: $CWD\..\test.txt, not $CWD\a\..\test.txt Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2015-03-17 08:43:40] ab@php.net Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php Hi, thanks for the report. In general - you're right. But. chdir() is not thread safe. The most PHP builds on Linux are NTS, so that doesn't matter. However as soon as you're on the TS build, another thread could have changed CWD right before you symlink with a relative path. Then it will suddenly fail being not in CWD expected. Thus - this is not portable and should not be used this way. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2014-10-06 14:34:43] nathan dot renniewaldock at gmail dot com Description: ------------ symlink() fails to create a relative link if the working dir is not the same as where the link is going (works correctly on Linux). Relative targets should be resolved from the dir the link will be. For now, my workaround is calling mklink through shell_exec. Test script: --------------- <?php file_put_contents("test.txt", time()); mkdir("a"); echo "symlink(): "; symlink("..\\test.txt", "a\\1.txt") && print("success\n"); echo "\nmklink: ".shell_exec("mklink a\\2.txt ..\\test.txt"); echo "\nchdir(), symlink(): "; chdir("a"); symlink("..\\test.txt", "3.txt") && print("success\n"); Actual result: -------------- C:\php-test>php a.php symlink(): PHP Warning: symlink(): Could not fetch file information(error 2) in C:\php-test\a.php on line 7 Warning: symlink(): Could not fetch file information(error 2) in C:\php-test\a.php on line 7 mklink: symbolic link created for a\2.txt <<===>> ..\test.txt chdir(), symlink(): success C:\php-test>dir a Directory of C:\php-test\a 06/10/2014 15:21 <SYMLINK> 2.txt [..\test.txt] 06/10/2014 15:21 <SYMLINK> 3.txt [..\test.txt] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=68167&edit=1