On 12Feb2012 18:57, "Martin v. Löwis" <mar...@v.loewis.de> wrote: | Am 12.02.2012 17:04, schrieb Antoine Pitrou: | > Le dimanche 12 février 2012 à 16:52 +0100, "Martin v. Löwis" a écrit : | >>> Why hard links? Symlinks are much more introspectable. When looking at | >>> a hard link I have no easy way to know it's the same as whatever other | >>> file in the same directory. | >> | >> There actually *is* an easy way, in regular ls: look at the link count. | >> It comes out of ls -l by default, and if it's >1, there will be an | >> identical file.
Yeah! Somewhere... :-( | > This doesn't tell me which file it is | | Well, you didn't ask for that, it does "to know it's the same as | whatever other file" nicely :-) Sure, at the OS level. Not much use for _inspection_. | As Charles-François explains, you can use ls -i for that, which isn't | that easy, but still straight-forward. If the hardlink is nearby. Of course in this example it (almost certainly?) is, but it needn't be. A symlink is a much better solution to this problem because: - usability - "ls -l" shows it to the user by default - practicality: With a symlink, to find out what it attaches to you examine the symlink. With a hardlink you first examine a fairly opaque numeric attribute of "python2", and _then_ you examine every other filename on the system! Admittedly starting with "python2.*" in the same directory, but in principle in other places. Arbitrary other places. IMO a symlink is far and away the better choice in this situation. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle. - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator 2 _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com