+----- On Sun, 11 Apr 1999 07:56:28 +0200, Steve Crane writes:
|
| 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.
Yet another explanation.
In any Unix system a file is a set of disk blocks that are linked
together (how isn't important, nor do they have to be complete blocks).
Note that a file doesn't have to have a name at all. A directory is a
set of names that are bound to files. The binding of name to file is
many to one, i.e. a file may have many names. Each of these bindings is
called a link, processes that have a file open are also linked to the
file. When a files link count becomes zero it's file space is
recovered. In the beginning there were just links but there are some
restrictions on where links may be used and an improvement was
developed at UCB. A file could contain a file name that was then used
in place of the first file and these were called symbolic or soft
links, the original links then became hard links.
/Michael
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