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On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Not really.� Whether hard links is supported is mostly a matter of what filesystem you are using - in modern times.� It's true that filesystems with complete POSIX semantics probably all support hardlinks, but that's far from every file on any given \*ix.� And of course, POSIX doesn't appear to have been created until the late 1990's.
�
Hard linking was reportedly in Unix Version 1, but I see nothing indicating it was in the original Unics of 1969.� Then again, I don't see much of anything on the net about what was and wasn't in Unics.
�
Well, if you're in a filesystem that supports hardlinking anyway.� Supporting that isn't inherent.� It requires some sort of on-disk representation for persistence, and not all filesystems support that.
�
Please recall that I was paraphrasing someone saying that hardlinks were seldom better, not never better.� I don't know that there's anything in your post that addresses that.
It's much easier to imagine a system with no hardlinks, than to imagine a system with no symlinks.
Dan Stromberg <drsalists@gmail.com> writes:Well, that suggestion is faulty. It ignores the fact that \*all\* ordinary
> It's been suggested that \*ix has hardlinks because someone thought up
> hardlinks before someone thought up symlinks - IOW, there are those who
> suggest that if people had added symlinks first, no one would've bothered
> adding hardlinks.
files on Unix are hard links. Any ordinary file entry in a directory is
a hard link to the file's data.
Not really.� Whether hard links is supported is mostly a matter of what filesystem you are using - in modern times.� It's true that filesystems with complete POSIX semantics probably all support hardlinks, but that's far from every file on any given \*ix.� And of course, POSIX doesn't appear to have been created until the late 1990's.
�
The �hard links� capability, therefore, isn't something that was added;
it's fundamental to Unix filesystems from their inception.
Hard linking was reportedly in Unix Version 1, but I see nothing indicating it was in the original Unics of 1969.� Then again, I don't see much of anything on the net about what was and wasn't in Unics.
�
The �ln� command adds \*additional\* hard links to an existing file's
data; but, once added, they're exactly the same as any other ordinary
file entry.
Well, if you're in a filesystem that supports hardlinking anyway.� Supporting that isn't inherent.� It requires some sort of on-disk representation for persistence, and not all filesystems support that.
�
> Symlinks are almost always more flexible, and almost always moreYet many tools don't work as expected with symbolic links which will
> clear.
work with an ordinary file (a �hard link�). One can argue that such
tools are to that extent buggy, but symbolic links produce deliberately
different behaviour which is sometimes not what one needs.
Please recall that I was paraphrasing someone saying that hardlinks were seldom better, not never better.� I don't know that there's anything in your post that addresses that.
It's much easier to imagine a system with no hardlinks, than to imagine a system with no symlinks.