link/symbolic link~ What is the differance?

[David Mandala]

Easiest way to explain the difference is: Hard links must exist on the
same file system (ie: partition) and soft links (symlinks) can exist
across partition boundaries. There are other differences but that is the
biggest that you might care about.

As explained below a hard link is a pointer to data that is already on
the drive. The name can be the same or different. With a hard link if
the original link is deleted the data remains accessible via the other
hard links. With a soft link if the original link is deleted the data is
gone and you have what is known as a hanging sym link, that is a soft
link that is now pointing at nothing. There are tools to scan your
drives to locate and delete hanging links. You would be surprised how
many hanging soft links can accumulate over time!

There are more differences but I'll leave that to you to discover.

Cheers,

Davidm

On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 11:36, Mike Starke wrote:
> /_> From what I've interpreted from a combination of the info/man pages on ln, it
> /_> seems that without  the -s it is just another command for copy.
> /_>
> /_> Is this correct?
> /_
> /_With a hard link, you have pointers to the same data saved at some
> /_particular location on the disk.  So it's technically not a copy.
> /_~M
> /_
> I must admit, I too, never fully understood the differance between
> soft & hard links.
> 
> -Mike
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