[Python-Dev] hard linking executables (original) (raw)

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Thu Jul 28 06:35:59 CEST 2011

Dan Stromberg <drsalists at gmail.com> writes:

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au>wrote:

> Dan Stromberg <drsalists at gmail.com> writes: > > > It's been suggested that […] if people had added symlinks first, > > no one would've bothered adding hardlinks. > > Well, that suggestion is faulty. It ignores the fact that all > ordinary 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.

POSIX didn't create those semantics, though; it formalised semantics that were already long-time convention.

My only point was that, unlike symbolic links, hard linking isn't some added feature, it's a property of the way Unix filesystems represent normal files. And you're right that I mean “on filesystems with POSIX semantics”.

It's much easier to imagine a system with no hardlinks, than to imagine a system with no symlinks.

Why imagine? There have been many of both.

-- \ “But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have | `\ examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.” | o_) —Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, 1987 | Ben Finney

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list