Say files A & B. If you create a hard link to file A as B,then
B points to the same inode as that of A.ie. you can say B
as another name for file A.now even if you delete file A,B is intact.
you can see or modify the contents that were in A through B as well.
Suppose you create a symbolic link to A, say C.then C just
contain the name of the file A,that's all.when you try to edit
the file C,internally it fetches the file A.In this case if you
delete A,the contents are completely lost.now again if yoyu
try to open file C,it will open A as if its a new one.
The main advantage of having sym-link is that you can have
a link between files lying on different file systems,which is not
allowed incase of hard links.
hope this may help you to some extent.
sudheer
On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Steve Crane wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 10, 1999 at 09:49:06PM -0500, Raul Beltran wrote:
> > ln -s <source> <target>
> >
> > the '-s' option creates a symbolic link instead of a hard link.
>
> I've often wondered just what is meant by 'symbolic link' and 'hard
> link'. The man page for ln mentions, but doesn't explain them. Can
> someone explain the difference or point me to some docs that do explain
> the difference.
>
> --
> Steve Crane
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.datapro.co.za/~stevec
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