Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!texbell!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Hard links to directories: why not? Message-ID: Date: 31 Jul 90 15:37:43 GMT References: <5222@milton.u.washington.edu> <6940@eos.UUCP> <1990Jul24.200022.2265@dg-rtp.dg.com> <1990Jul30.153949.28122@dg-rtp.dg.com> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 19 In article <1990Jul30.153949.28122@dg-rtp.dg.com> goudreau@larrybud.rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) writes: > 1) I create a subdirectory named "sub". > 2) Unbeknownst to be me, Joe Schmo creates a hard link of his own > to "sub". > 3) I try to rmdir "sub", which is empty, and find that I cannot, > because its link count is > 2. So rename it, and bitch to your system admin guy. The only problem with this would be if it was a BIG directory and was still on your disk quota (if your system does such things), and Joe Schmo could still screw you up that way if it was a file. Yes, symlinks are more useful. Unfortunately they're still not universally available. This is a trivial change at the application level for systems that don't yet support the newer method. Personally I'm more upset about the fact "cat" still doesn't use perror. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U`