It appears that is_link is incorrect when testing a symbolic link file whose target does not exist.

is_link("/absolute/path/to/my/link")

returns false when the link points to a non-existant target.  I believe it should return true based on the following C code:

#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>


main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    struct stat buf;
    char * file_name = argv[1];
    lstat(file_name, &buf);
    if (S_ISLNK(buf.st_mode))
    {
        printf("file is a link\n");
    }
    else
    {
        printf("file is not a link\n");
    }
}

This prints "file is a link" even when the target doesn't exist.   

This is an issue because you can't tell when the symlink already exists even if it is incorrect.  I've tried lstat (returns 0 length array), fileexists (false), etc.   symlink fails on the creation of the link because it is there.  It seems like the only way to detect this condition is to have a successful readlink call combined with a false file_exists or symlink call.   


The ChangeLog for 3.0.15 and 3.0.16 doesn't address this issue as being fixed.