While you're right about the "symbolic" term against "soft" (ln -s creates a symbolic link), you're wrong considering symbolic links as "hard". UNIX _has_ hard links (just use the ln command without the -s option).

From ln man page:
"A hard link to a file is indistinguishable from the original directory entry; any changes to a file are effectively independent of the name used to reference the file. Hard links may not normally refer to directories and may not span file systems.
A symbolic link contains the name of the file to which it is linked. The referenced file is used when an open operation is performed on the link. A stat(2) on a symbolic link will return the linked-to file; symbolic links may span file systems and may refer to directories."

Symbolic links can point to a file/folder with a relative or absolute path.
Deleting a symlink (symbolic link) will simply delete it, not the file it is pointing to; if you delete the original file, the symlink will point to nowhere.
Deleting a file that a hard link points to will not delete the file and the hard link will still be valid; the file will be deleted only when all the hard links will be deleted too.
Put simply, every filename you see in your folders is actually a hard link; using ln you make another hard link to it. Time Machine uses hard links for all unchanged files whem it takes a snapshot of your drive.

[ Reply to This | # ]