12-08-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jim mcnamara
In really old filesystems it was possible. Ever see a hard-linked directory? It is not allowed now. Read up on it if you want. Why would such a thing be mentioned or considered a problem, you ask?
Maybe it happened a long time ago...
You are right, dangling hard-links are actually still possible. For example when using ufs with journaling disabled and after a filesystem corruption or simply after running the clri command.
I though you were confusing with symbolic links because your circular link example "link -> link -> physical file" is something quite hard to achieve with hard-links (hardlinks refer to inodes, not files) but quite common with symlinks.
---------- Post updated at 10:14 ---------- Previous update was at 10:10 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by
naw_deepak
As per above thread, hard link appears to be a just pointer. Soft link is pointer too. Than, what is difference between hard and soft link?
They point to different things.
A hard-link point to actual data while a symbolic (or soft) link point to a filename / path that may exist or not.
If you remove a hard-link, there will be no way to refer to the data unless other hard-links still exist to the very same data while if you remove a symlink, you don't loose data, just a way to refer to it.
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ln(1) General Commands Manual ln(1)
Name
ln - link to a file
Syntax
ln [ -f ] [ -i ] [ -s ] name1 [name2]
ln [ -f ] [ -i ] [ -s ] name ... directory
Description
A link is a directory entry referring to a file. A file, together with its size and all its protection information may have several links
to it. There are two kinds of links: hard links and symbolic links.
By default makes hard links. A hard link to a file is indistinguishable from the original directory entry. Any changes to a file are
effective independent of the name used to reference the file. Hard links may not span file systems and may not refer to directories.
Given one or two arguments, creates a link to an existing file name1. If name2 is given, the link has that name. The name2 may also be a
directory in which to place the link. Otherwise it is placed in the current directory. If only the directory is specified, the link is
made to the last component of name1.
Given more than two arguments, makes links to all the named files in the named directory. The links made have the same name as the files
being linked to.
Options
-f Forces existing destination pathnames to be removed before linking without prompting for confirmation.
-i Write a prompt to standard output requesting information for each link that would overwrite an existing file. If the response from
standard input is affirmative, and if permissions allow, the link is done. The -i option has this effect even if the standard input is
not a terminal.
-s Creates a symbolic link.
A symbolic link contains the name of the file to which it is linked. The referenced file is used when an operation is performed on
the link. A on a symbolic link returns the linked-to file. An must be done to obtain information about the link. The call may be
used to read the contents of a symbolic link. Symbolic links may span file systems and may refer to directories.
See Also
cp(1), mv(1), rm(1), link(2), readlink(2), stat(2), symlink(2)
ln(1)