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Full Discussion: Differentiate Soft and Hard Link
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Differentiate Soft and Hard Link Post 302126149 by hemangjani on Tuesday 10th of July 2007 09:38:41 AM
Old 07-10-2007
Hope this helps:

Soft Link:
-------------

- Soft links are links to a file but not the inode.

- Created using
ln -s file1 file2

=> ls -il

131135 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 5 Jul 10 09:04 file2 -> file1
131137 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 35 Jul 10 09:03 file1

- The inode for file1 is 131137 and inode for file2 is 131135.
- If you see the permission bits, there is 'l' in the front for a soft link.
- If file1 is deleted, the link still exists. But if you try to view file2, its empty. This means that once the main file is deleted the data is gone.


Hard Link:
--------------

- Hard links are links to inode

- Created using

ln file1 file2

=> ls -il

131136 -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 48 Jul 10 09:27 file1
131136 -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 48 Jul 10 09:27 file2

- The inode for file1 and file2 is the same (131136).
- If you see the output above for "ls -i", file2 does not show that it is linked to file1. In reality it is not linked to file1 but it is linked to the inode.
- If you see that there is number '2' before the username 'user'. This shows the number of hard links to the inode.
- If file1 is deleted, the data is not deleted. If you view file2 the data is still there. Deleting file1 only deletes a link. The data is gone once the last hard link is deleted.
 

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LEARN ABOUT HPUX

list_link

list link(1m)															     list link(1m)

NAME

       list link - Displays a list of all the soft links whose names match the link name that you specify

SYNOPSIS

       cdscp list link link-name [with attribute-name = attribute-value]

ARGUMENTS

       The  full  name	of  a specific soft link.  The last simple name can contain wildcard characters.  The name of a particular attribute.  The
       value of a particular attribute.

DESCRIPTION

       The list link command displays a list of all the soft links whose names match the link name that you specify.  The  last  simple  name  can
       contain	wildcard  characters.	You  can  use  a  with	attribute-name	=  attribute-value clause to limit output only to soft links whose
       attributes have values equal to the specified values.  A space must precede and follow the = (equals sign).  This command does not list the
       name of the directory, object entry, or other soft link to which the soft link points.

   Privilege Required
       You  must  have	read permission to the directory that stores the soft link.  If you use a with	attribute-name = attribute-value clause in
       the command, you also need read or test permission to the selected soft links.

NOTE

       This command is replaced at Revision 1.1 by the dcecp command and may not be provided in future releases of DCE.

EXAMPLE

       The following command displays a list of all the soft links whose names begin with the letter l in the directory  /.:/admin.   cdscp>  list
       link /.:/admin/l*

			       LIST
			   SOFTLINK   /.../abc.com/admin
				 AT   1991-10-15-15:54:38 lnk01 lnk02 lnk03 lnk04 lnk05 lnk06

RELATED INFORMATION

       Commands: create link(1m), delete link(1m), remove link(1m), set link(1m), show link(1m)

																     list link(1m)
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