Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sjsca4!poffen
From: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 'link'ing a la U*IX in DOS
Message-ID: <1990Jun5.150222.26807@sj.ate.slb.com>
Date: 5 Jun 90 15:02:22 GMT
References: <1990Jun1.193543.13903@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1990Jun3.054243.11711@druid.uucp> <8153@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <1990Jun4.025220.2149@druid.uucp>
Reply-To: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Organization: Schlumberger Technologies, San Jose, CA.
Lines: 38

In article <1990Jun4.025220.2149@druid.uucp> darcy@druid.UUCP (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) writes:
>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."
>

This was discussed very recently. What you are implying above is NOT a symbolic
link, but a hard link. This is undesireable. The way Unix implements a symbolic
link is to create a special file with the text of the destination in it. The
OS, upon seeing this, would then vector to the destination pointed to by the
link.

This is possible on DOS, although a TSR would be required for the translation.
In fact, someone wrote one a little while back. I don't have that info though.
`

Russ Poffenberger               DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com
Schlumberger Technologies       UUCP:   {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen
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