Hi! I wonder what the "philosophy" is regarding error handling in file related methods in Ruby. Let me give an example. It is the method Kernel.test(?-, ...), i.e. a test to see if two files are hard links to the same file: $ mkdir subdir $ touch subdir/aaa $ ln subdir/aaa subdir/bbb $ $ chmod 0755 subdir $ ruby -e 'p test(?-, *ARGV)' subdir/aaa subdir/bbb true $ $ chmod 0 subdir $ ruby -e 'p test(?-, *ARGV)' subdir/aaa subdir/bbb false <--- NOTE THIS !!! $ The "problem" with this behaviour is that the files *are* hard links but the permissions prevents us from finding that out. I think it would be better to get an exception indicating that, instead of "lying" to the script. I suspect that Ruby behaves in this way in several similar situations. Should this be changed? If so, what would be the preferred action? /Johan Holmberg