Soft vs. Hard Links

jrdioko · 06-13-2004, 02:14 PM

I've been reading about the ln command, and I'm a little confused. Is there any reason you'd ever want to create a symlink instead of a hard link if the two files are on the same filesystem? It seems to me that the only reason a symlink would be better is if a hard link wouldn't work in a particular situation.

Thanks
Johnathan

Tinkster · 06-13-2004, 02:29 PM

Let's say that a hard link doesn't show up as a link
in ls ... you're running the risk of deleting a file
because it has two different names in different
places, both have a "normal" size, none of them
indicates (other than the number of links you'll
see in ls) that it may be a link ;) But if you're used
to looking at that value you probably won't have
that problem.

Personally I just like things like

Code:

 ls -l /dev/cdrom 
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            9 2004-03-17 13:41 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/scd0

Cheers,
Tink

jrdioko · 06-13-2004, 02:41 PM

Ok, now that makes sense. Thanks!