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From: mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (System Mangler)
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Are links as useful as they could be?
Message-ID: <1074@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sun, 26-Oct-86 05:07:37 EST
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.1074
Posted: Sun Oct 26 05:07:37 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Oct-86 01:20:01 EST
References: <21127@rochester.ARPA> <65@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <3739@umcp-cs.UUCP> <8313@sun.uucp>
Distribution: net
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 12
Xref: watmath net.unix:9717 net.unix-wizards:20134
Summary: not that transparent

In article <8313@sun.uucp>, guy@sun.UUCP writes:
> > why didn't they [Berkeley] just make symbolic links a variant
> > type of directory entry, containing a string instead of an
> > inode number?
>
> Because that would have required non-trivial changes to programs that read
> directory entries,

Many directory-reading programs (ls, tar, find) had to gain explicit
knowledge of symbolic links anyway, the changes were even user-visible.

Don Speck   speck@vlsi.caltech.edu  {seismo,rutgers}!cit-vax!speck