Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!hybrid!robohack!druid!darcy
From: darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 'link'ing a la U*IX in DOS
Message-ID: <1990Jun4.025220.2149@druid.uucp>
Date: 4 Jun 90 02:52:20 GMT
References: <1990Jun1.193543.13903@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1990Jun3.054243.11711@druid.uucp> <8153@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Reply-To: darcy@druid.UUCP (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Organization: D'Arcy Cain Consulting, West Hill, Ontario
Lines: 27

In article <8153@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> dixon@sagittarius.crd.ge.com (walt dixon) writes:
>In article 1990Jun3.054243.11711@druid.uucp D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid) 
>writes:
>>In article <1990Jun1.193543.13903@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
>>umhudso7@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Wayne Hudson) writes:
>>>What I'm looking for is something that will let me make symbolic links,
>>>like U*IX.
>>You can't do it with DOS.  Get a Unix system.
>This statement isn't strictly true.  The directory entry for a file
>contains the starting cluster on disk.  One could create a second
>directory entry and insert the appropriate starting cluster.  There
>are a couple of side effects from this hack.  Chkdsk will find clusters
>that are multiply allocated.  Also it is possible to confuse DOS.  In
>unix a reference count in the inode(?) keeps the file from being deleted
>out from under a symbolic link.  There's no such facility within DOS.
>
OK so I guess what I meant to say was "You can't do it with DOS and expect
to have a healthy file system that acts in a predictable way and anyway you
can't do it easily."

As the man said, you could do it but "It would be wrong."

-- 
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