The Monday 2005-04-04 at 20:03 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Saturday 02 April 2005 03:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
...
Quick question:
Is there an easier way to list hardlinks, than comparing inode numbers?
No. Directory entries associate names with inodes (implicitly sharing the same file system device, which accounts for the prohibition on cross-device links). Each reference to a particular inode is a name for the file (or other file system entity). It's not as if one's the "original" or "real" file and the other(s) are the links. They're all coequal names for the same file system entity. This is in contrast to symbolic links, in which there's a fundamental distinction between the (symbolic) link and the target.
So the only way to find what names refer to the same inode is to enumerate directory entries and compare inode numbers.
Ah, I see. So it is not easy as well to know if a file somewhere is hardlinked somewhere else, except by comparing all inode entries in all directory lists from the same partition/disk. Do you know of a (brief) description of how a inode fs works, somewhere? I come from Dos; I did study how FAT worked in detail, but unix was out of bounds for me at the time, and later I had no occasion to study ext2 or similar. So, although I have some inkling of what an inode is, I really don't know O:-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson