When the ORPHAN property is disabled in dircolors, ls --color does not stat() symlinks. However, in this case symlinks are not colored using the LINK property. How to reproduce: $ eval $(dircolors -p | sed 's/^ORPHAN.*/ORPHAN 00/' | dircolors -) $ mkdir /tmp/xxx $ ln -s /tmp/nowhere /tmp/xxx/yyy $ ls --color /tmp/xxx Expected output: yyy, colored cyan (default for LINK) Actual output: yyy, not colored Fix attached. Basically, in gobble_file(), assume a symlink is ok if stat() is not run on it. Thanks, M