On 2010-05-04, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Grant Edwards wrote: > >> except that Python objects can form a generalized graph, and Unix >> filesystems are constrained to be a tree. > > Actually I believe that root is allowed to create arbitrary > hard links to directories in Unix,
I know that used to be the case in SunOS (as I found out the hard way), but I've been told by Solaris experts that it is no longer allowed. I was also under the impression that it wasn't allowed in Linux, but I've never tried it. According the the Linux ln (1) man page: -d, -F, --directory allow the superuser to attempt to hard link directories (note: will probably fail due to system restrictions, even for the superuser) > so it's possible to turn the file system in to a general graph. It's > highly unrecommended, though, because it confuses the heck out of > programs that recursively traverse directories (which is why only > root is allowed to do it). It sure caused trouble when I did it on a SunOS system back in the day (1990 or thereabouts). -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I feel like I'm at in a Toilet Bowl with a gmail.com thumbtack in my forehead!! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list