[ruby-core:102119] [Ruby master Feature#17548] Need simple way to include symlink directories in Dir.glob

Issue #17548 has been updated by keithrbennett (Keith Bennett).


I would like to suggest that Ruby provide a simple way to glob that includes the content of symlinked directories.

I have my Ruby projects in a `~/work` directory that is symlinked to a directory an another partition.

For example, `~` is on `/dev/sda1`, whereas `~/work` is a link to a directory on `/dev/sda2`. I need this because I want to operate on the same code bases regardless of which partition I boot from (they are various Linux distros).

The array returned by `Dir.glob(Dir.home, '**', '*rb')` does not include any files in ~/work.

I was hoping that one of the flags that can be passed to `glob` would help, but the only relevant one I found was to *not* follow links, which is the opposite of what I wanted.

There are arcane workarounds using fancy glob patterns, but I believe it's important that the language provide a simple way to accomplish this. (For example, the Unix `find` command has an `-L` option for this.) I understand that it may not be possible to retrofit it into the existing functions (`glob` and `[]`), but even providing a different method (e.g. one named `glob_include_links`) would be ok. Or perhaps a `glob2` method could be added that would include simple ways to specify that files in hidden directories should be included, in addition to the option to follow symlinks.

I admit that I have no idea how much effort this would be to implement, especially regarding Windows compatibility, but this would be nice to have.


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Feature #17548: Need simple way to include symlink directories in Dir.glob
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17548#change-89973

* Author: keithrbennett (Keith Bennett)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
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I would like to suggest that Ruby provide a simple way to glob that includes the content of symlinked directories.

I have my Ruby projects in a `~/work` directory that is symlinked to a directory an another partition.

For example, `~` is on `/dev/sda1`, whereas `~/work` is a link to a directory on `/dev/sda2`. I need this because I want to operate on the same code bases regardless of which partition I boot from (they are various Linux distros).

The array returned by `Dir.glob(Dir.home, '**', '*rb')` does not include any files in ~/work. The size of that array is only 84. In contrast, when I use `find ~ -name "*rb" | wc -l` to get the number of files, I get 87,229 files.

I was hoping that one of the flags that can be passed to `glob` would help, but the only relevant one I found was to *not* follow links, which is the opposite of what I wanted.

There are arcane workarounds using fancy glob patterns, but I believe it's important that the language provide a simple way to accomplish this. (For example, the Unix `find` command has an `-L` option for this.) I understand that it may not be possible to retrofit it into the existing functions (`glob` and `[]`), but even providing a different method (e.g. one named `glob_include_links`) would be ok. Or perhaps a `glob2` method could be added that would include simple ways to specify that files in hidden directories should be included, in addition to the option to follow symlinks.

I admit that I have no idea how much effort this would be to implement, especially regarding Windows compatibility, but this would be nice to have.




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