NAME
"File::lchown" - modify attributes of symlinks without dereferencing
them
SYNOPSIS
use File::lchown qw( lchown lutimes );
lchown $uid, $gid, $linkpath or die "Cannot lchown() - $!";
lutimes $atime, $mtime, $linkpath or die "Cannot lutimes() - $!";
DESCRIPTION
The regular "chown" system call will dereference a symlink and apply
ownership changes to the file at which it points. Some OSes provide
system calls that do not dereference a symlink but instead apply their
changes directly to the named path, even if that path is a symlink (in
much the same way that "lstat" will return attributes of a symlink
rather than the file at which it points).
FUNCTIONS
$count = lchown $uid, $gid, @paths
Set the new user or group ownership of the specified paths, without
dereferencing any symlinks. Passing the value -1 as either the $uid or
$gid will leave that attribute unchanged. Returns the number of files
successfully changed.
$count = lutimes $atime, $mtime, @paths
Set the access and modification times on the specified paths, without
dereferencing any symlinks. Passing "undef" as both $atime and $mtime
will update the times to the current system time.
Note that for both "lchown" and "lutimes", if more than one path is
given, if later paths succeed after earlier failures, then the value of
$! will not be reliable to indicate the nature of the failure. If you
wish to use $! to report on failures, make sure only to pass one path at
a time.
TODO
* Implement sub-second precision on "lutimes", most likely by taking
floats or two-element ARRAY refs, similar to "Time::HiRes" uses.
SEE ALSO
* lchown(2) - change ownership of a file
* lutimes(2) - change file timestamps
AUTHOR
Paul Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>