Danny, On Wednesday 01 September 2004 15:17, Danny Sauer wrote:
Randall wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] How do I remove a sym link?' on Wed, Sep 01 at 09:34:
Danny,
On Wednesday 01 September 2004 07:10, Danny Sauer wrote:
Tom wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] How do I remove a sym link?' on Tue, Aug
31 at 17:22:
...
I'd go on, but I think that perhaps a description of what a symlink actually *is* might be in order. Again, I'm making assumptions, but it seems like you may not have a very good handle on what a symlink is for, what it does, etc. :)
I answered _that_ question just a week ago in news:alt.os.linux.suse! Look for the post from me with the subject "Re: KDE 3.3 fixing screensavers" on 2004-08-24 at 15:43.
But you left out the important parts - hard links can't span devices, while symlinks can, symlinks take up more space than hardlinks, and hardlinks are usually maintained when moving one of the entries, while symlinks break if the target's moved. :)
Mostly valid points, but the person had asked specifically about symbolic links. Plus, as I said, there was extra context both within the excerpted reply and the overall topic thread. As to the space issue, doesn't that depend on the implementation details of the file system in use? I recall at least one file system implementation (one of the BSD file systems, I think) that would store the content of files smaller than a certain threshhold in the inode itself. Most symbolic links would come under that threshold and hence require no more storage than an empty file. A directory entry (for a hard link) would require more actual file space. Anyway, I wasn't trying to write a treatise, just help someone out who was curious about what symbolic links were all about.
Not that I can be bothered to read other lists or anything...
Ha! There was a time when I didn't have to merely skim so many of the lists and groups I monitor.
--Danny, only replying for the sake of complete archives
Randall Schulz