Thus it was written in the epistle of Wirt Atmar,
> Jeff,
>
> > As well, it should work that way.  Looking at the reverse benefit, you may
> >  want the link to temporarilly point to nothing.  Because... Maybe it's just
> >  a temporary situation (link pointing to a purged file) and soon you plan to
> >  have a file out there.  Perhaps like a file equation pointing to a
> >  non-existent file.
>
> I have no complaint about the PURGE acting that way. It should. It's the
> RENAME behavior that seems less than good to me.

With all due respect, that seems very odd to me.  I've tried to think of why
one might *want* PURGE to act that way, and the file equate analogy seems to
offer the only light.  If I want one entity to decide which file gets worked
on and another to work on that file, not caring whatever which file it is, then
it seems that the links provide that.  They are, essentially, file equations
which survive across multiple sessions and jobs.  If that is the concept, then
surely the same arguments which stand for PURGE working as it does would serve
for RENAME acting as it does.  Supposedly, they are both for the same purpose,
which I take to be to clear out the far end of the link in preparation for
putting something else there, the difference being (as it is anyway) that
RENAME sets the file aside rather than eliminating it.

> Although I said earlier that a LINK takes on basically the same attributes as
> a file equation in MPE, the file equation is a much more fragile and empheral
> thing than a LINK is -- and it seems to me that the LINK should reflect that
> greater "solidity" in its behavior.

But unless I've misunderstood you, the "solidity" (or perhaps "rigidity") of
the LINK is what is bothering you.  It doesn't follow the target.  It sounds
like you are wishing for hard links--that is, links which always point to the
file, no matter what other names it may be known by.

Anywho,
Ted
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Sys, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
Most of the arts, as painting, sculpture, and music, have emotional appeal
to the general public. This is because these arts can be experienced by some
one or more of our senses. Such is not true of the art of mathematics; this
art can be appreciated only by mathematicians, and to become a mathematician
requires a long period of intensive training. The community of
mathematicians is similar to an imaginary community of musical composers
whose only satisfaction is obtained by the interchange among themselves of
the musical scores they compose.
                        -- Lanczos, Cornelius
          ==========================================================
         Deep thoughts to be found at http://www.southern.edu/~ashted