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NAME

       chase - chase symbolic links

SYNOPSIS

       chase   [   --verbose   |   --from-file   |   -f   |   --null  |  -0  |
       --loop-warn-threshold COUNT | -w COUNT | --loop-fail-threshold COUNT  |
       -l COUNT | --disable-loop-detection | -D ] [file...]

       chase -v | --version

       chase -h | --help

DESCRIPTION

       Chase  is  a small utility that tracks down the name of the actual file
       that is truly accessed, when one hits a symbolic link.  It  chases  the
       link, so to speak.

       In  normal  operation,  you give chase a name of an existing file.  The
       program will then show you (or, more accurately, print to the  standard
       output  stream)  the  name  of  the  real  file  that the original file
       referred to.  It does not matter if you give the program the name of  a
       regular  file;  chase  will  just give you the same name back.  You can
       give the utility the option --verbose, in order  to  have  it  be  more
       verbose  in  its  operation.   You  can also give the program a list of
       files from which it will read the file names  to  be  chased  (see  the
       option --from-file).

       I’ll  give  you  a  good example of a case where chase is useful.  In a
       Debian GNU/Linux  system,  software  installation  is  handled  by  the
       program dpkg(8).  There is a way to query dpkg(8), which package a file
       belongs to.  Unfortunately, this does not not grok all symlinks.   This
       is  a  problem, since the Debian system uses symbolic links extensively
       for handling several flavours of a program (say, XEmacs and  GNU  Emacs
       and the versions 19 and 20 of both).  Now with chase, one can determine
       the real file easily and then using  this  result  as  an  argument  to
       dpkg(8).  Observe:

       ajk@ugh:~$ dpkg -S `which xemacs20`
       dpkg: /usr/bin/xemacs20 not found.
       ajk@ugh:~$ dpkg -S `which xemacs20 | xargs chase`
       xemacs20-nomule: /usr/bin/xemacs-20.4-nomule
       ajk@ugh:~$

       When given multiple file names as arguments, chase will chase every one
       of them in order.

OPTIONS

       The following options are recognized by chase:

       --verbose
              Chat about what is being done.

       -f, --from-file
              Treat the file names on the command line as sources for names to
              be  chased.   If this option is present, chase will read in each
              of the files given on the command line (both a sole dash "-" and
              the  absence of file names will be taken as meaning the standard
              input stream).  Each line in the files is taken  as  a  verbatim
              file  name  that  will  be  chased like it had been given on the
              command line of a run without this option.  There  is  no  means
              for  quoting  the  newline  character; therefore only file names
              that do not contain newlines can be  specified  via  the  files.
              This  restriction  is lifted by the -0 option, though.  However,
              literal spaces are preserved and are not interpreted as special.

       -0, --null
              This option implies the option -f, which reads file names from a
              file.  The -0 option modifies the behavior -f so that instead of
              treating  lines  in  the  file as file names, the file names are
              expected to be separated by null characters.   This  allows  for
              specifying file names with newlines in them with -f.

       -w WCOUNT, --loop-warn-threshold=WCOUNT

       -l LCOUNT, --loop-fail-threshold=LCOUNT
              Set  the  threshold  for  warning  about a possible symlink loop
              (WCOUNT) and for failing because of  one  (LCOUNT).   There  are
              default  values,  which  you can find out by invoking chase with
              the argument --help.  Using zero as WCOUNT  or  LCOUNT  disables
              the check.

       -D, --disable-loop-detection
              Normally  chase  keeps  a  record of all symlinks it has visited
              when chasing the current file.  It uses this record to  reliably
              detect  symlink  loops.   However, checking the record slows the
              process a little (more for long  chains  of  symlinks)  and  the
              record  requires  a small amount of memory (more for long chains
              of symlinks), so it may be desirable in some  cases  to  inhibit
              this  check.   This  option disables this loop detection and the
              associated recording of visited symlinks.  When this  option  is
              in  effect  (assuming no bugs in the related code) chase runs in
              constant space and linear time relative to  the  length  of  the
              symlink chains encountered.

       -h, --help
              Output a usage summary and exit successfully.

       -v, --version
              Show version information and exit successfully.

DIAGNOSTICS

       The  exit  status  is  0  if and only if all files given in the command
       lines exist and none of them are dangling symlinks.

       The following messages are emitted by chase when it suspects or detects
       a symlink loop:

       quite many symlink hops, hope we’re not looping...
              This  means  that  the  chain of symlinks is longer than a given
              threshold.  This may mean that the chain is infinite  (and  thus
              contains  a  loop somewhere).  The threshold can be specified by
              using the --loop-warn-threshold command line option.

       too many symlink hops, giving up...
              This means that the chain of symlinks is  longer  than  a  given
              threshold.   This  usually means that the chain is infinite (and
              thus contains a loop somewhere).  The threshold can be specified
              by  using the --loop-fail-threshold command line option.  If you
              see this message, it means that chase has given up on that file.

       symlink loop detected, giving up...
              The  symlink  chain  is looping and therefore there is no result
              for the chase.  Chase has given up on that file.

       Additionally, Chase emits  several  error  messages  under  problematic
       conditions.   They  all  come from the system libraries, so the program
       has no control over the actual  wording  of  the  messages.   They  all
       follow  the format "program name: file name: error message", where file
       name is the name of the offending file or directory.

BUGS

       Chase  may  have  bugs.  If  you  find  them,  please  report  them  to
       <rotty@debian.org> or preferably via the Debian bugtracking system.

AUTHOR

       Chase  has  been written by Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia@iki.fi> and is
       currently maintained by Andreas Rottmann <rotty@debian.org>.

SEE ALSO

       find(1), ln(1), namei(1), readlink(1), readlink(2), symlinks(1)