links

[sde]

what is the difference between a symbolic link and one that isn't?

i made a link in my /etc/ directory to my httpd.conf file so it's easy to find and edit.

i tried both these commands and didn't really see a difference:

[SHELL]# cd /etc
# ln /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf httpd.conf[/SHELL]
[SHELL]# cd /etc
# ln -s /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf httpd.conf[/SHELL]

both ways seemed to edit both files and work the same except redhat colors symbolic links differently. maybe it's time to bust out the linux bible

[sdeming]

I'm pretty sure the main difference is that with a hard link the object you are linking to must exist.

For example, you can run "ln -s /anyhingIwant /tmp/mylink" and it will always work. Then you can create /anythingIwant and remove it at will without breaking the link. A hard link (without -s) cannot exist without the target existing.

what sdeming said plus hard links can not span across file systems. You can't make a hard link to a directory while you can sym link. And probably something else I forgot