Symbolic links and real file names [mainly Windows Platform]

Discussion
3

Not necessarely, absolute_file_name/3 might only cover this property:

  • absolute_file_name(File): File is the absolute file name of PathName (section 8.26.1).

And not this property of GNU-Prologs file_property/2:

  • real_file_name(File): File is the real file name of PathName (follows symbolic links).

These are two different concepts in operating systems.

Edit 13.10.2023
The documentation of SWI-Prolog absolute_file_name/3 has also this remark:

Various
Note that this predicate does not resolve symlinks to their actual canonical path.

For example on WSL2 SWI-Prolog absolute_file_name/2 doesn’t follow
any links. You can try yourself this easy scenario:

$ ls -la foo
f4.pl -> ../bar/f3.pl
$ ls -la bar
f3.pl

And now SWI-Prolog gives me:

$ swipl
Welcome to SWI-Prolog (threaded, 64 bits, version 8.4.2)
?- absolute_file_name('foo/f4.pl', X).
X = '/home/user/foo/f4.pl'.