Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!eris.berkeley.edu!mwm From: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Soft links vs hard links (was Re: yet another 1.4 request) Message-ID: <26035@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 5 Jul 89 22:18:56 GMT References: <8907051925.AA04329@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 35 <:Hey Matt, what about your backup and restore program? Same executable, <:changes behavior depending on the name--that seems like a prime candidate <:for a soft link to a file. < < Absolutely true. But how many programs are like that? < < compress-uncompress < backup-restore < < maybe one or two others.... not very many. I can think of three others (on Unix - it's sorta silly to count them on a system that doesnt' have links) off the top of my head: ex-vi-edit csh--sh-a.out (hmm - make it four: sh--sh also) rsh-/usr/hosts < So if you take it in perspective about 90% of < my soft links would be directories. On the amiga there would < be more reason to soft link files (say, fonts and commercial < libraries so I can keep stuff bundled with the rest of its < associated software). Your soft links only? My personal links split about 70-30 the other way. On the other hand, system wide (on my systems), there are _far_ more links to files (whether soft or hard) than links to directories. There are over 1700 in /usr/hosts alone.