modify actime and modtime of symbolic links

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I am trying to duplicate a symbolic link, the new link should be the exact replica of the original one, with same file attributes, permissions, owner, group and even the time.

i m successful in changing the owner and group, but when i try to change the time using utime, the time of the file which is pointed to by this link get updated.

for example, there is file1 and file1_link is a symbolic link to file1. something like this:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 avni avni 5 Feb 27 11:44 file1_link -> file1
-rw-rw-rw- 1 avni avni 2061 Feb 26 18:47 file1

now i have to duplicate file1_link so that i have

lrwxrwxrwx 1 avni avni 5 Feb 27 11:44 file1_link_dup -> file1

but instead i get
lrwxrwxrwx 1 avni avni 5 Feb 28 11:30 file1_link_dup -> file1

when is do utime for file1_link_dup the result is something like this:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 avni avni 5 Feb 27 11:44 file1_link -> file1
-rw-rw-rw- 1 avni avni 2061 Feb 27 11:44 file1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 avni avni 5 Feb 28 11:30 file1_link_dup -> file1

can any body tell how this can be achieved.
I read about lutimes, but its not on my system.

i am writing code in C. I cannot use perl.

I am new to UNIX and hence have little knowledge of the various distributions and commands available.

Can any onw guide on where i should start the search for the solution!!!

Thanks in advance.
Edit/Delete Message

2

That is the expected behavour for utime()

The utime\(\) function sets the access and modification times of path to the values in the 
utimbuf structure. If times is a NULL pointer, the access and modification times are set 
to the current time. If the named file is a symbolic link, utime\(\) resolves the symbolic link.
3

Hi fpmurphy,

I know that, but i don't want utime to resolve the symbolic link.

4

Then you need to roll your own version of utime or lutimes. Look at the source code for these in the FreeBSD sources or any number of other sites.