Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!nuchat!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Soft links vs hard links (was Re: yet another 1.4 request)
Message-ID: <4019@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Date: 14 Jul 89 03:53:00 GMT
References: <17573@gryphon.COM>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston
Lines: 30

In article <17573@gryphon.COM>, ddave@pnet02.cts.com (David Donley) writes:
> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> >Intel's OpenNET implements this under Xenix. It calls them redirects. They
> >are in every way inferior to symbolic links.
> Could you be a little bit more specific?

% df
/         (/dev/dsk/0s1    ):       10 blocks     2517 i-nodes
/usr      (/dev/dsk/1s3    ):     3878 blocks    11565 i-nodes
/usr1     (/dev/dsk/0s3    ):    11996 blocks    11367 i-nodes
% du /tmp
45	.
% rdr /tmp /usr1/tmp
% du /tmp
0	.
% something_that_chews_up_lots_of_space
% du /tmp
1636	.
% cd /
% du tmp
45	.

When the fs sees "/tmp" at the beginning of a string it textually replaces
it with the string "/usr1/tmp". It has to be the exact string (cd /; du tmp
had a different effect), it has to be dynamically created (as opposed to
symlinks, which are non-volatile), and it involves a table-look-up on every
file open. Symbolic links are much cleaner.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva      `-_-'
...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.hackercorp.com  'U`