Question

The following script creates symlinks as expected, but the original file can never be found. Can someone tell me why? They appear to be valid symlinks because they register as aliases in OS X and File.symlink? returns true once they have been created.

 #!/usr/bin/env ruby

 case ARGV.first when 'link'
   file = ARGV[1]

   if !File.exist?(file)
     puts "Unfortunately, \"#{file}\" was not found."
     exit 0
   end

   bin = "/usr/local/bin/"

   if !File.directory?(bin)
     puts "#{bin} does not exist!"
     puts "creating #{bin}..."
     system "mkdir -p #{bin}"
   end

   if File.extname(file).empty?
     if File.symlink?(bin + file)
       puts "Unfortunately, \"#{bin + file}\" already exists."
       exit 0
     end

     name = bin + file

     puts "Symlinking #{file} to #{name}..."
     File.symlink(file, name)
     system "chmod +x #{name}"
   else
     name = file.split(File.extname(file))
     name = bin + name.first

     if File.symlink?(name)
       puts "Unfortunately, \"#{name}\" already exists."
       exit 0
     end

     puts "Symlinking #{file} to #{name}..."
     File.symlink(file, name)
     system "chmod +x #{name}"
   end
 else
   puts "try: bin link <file>"
 end

The script is run in the following way:

 ruby script.rb link myfile.rb

Answer 1

To answer my own question, replacing the instances of

File.symlink(file, name) 

with

File.symlink(File.expand_path(file), name) 

worked perfectly.