On Fri, 2006-07-21 at 11:43 +1200, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: > A file's data and its directory-related matadata are two different > things in Unix. When a file is created, the link count is one. When you > add a (hard!-)link to it, the count is increased, when you delete a > "file", the count is decreased. When the count reaches 0, the data > belonging to the inode is deleted and the disk space freed.
An excellent summary, Volker. If anyone is interested in a more involved explanation, the following paper is very good, from what I recall ☺ http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix2000/invitedtalks/sanchez_html/
