On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Jean-Francois <[email protected]> wrote: > May someone help me to understand how exactly hard links works ? To some > extend U understood that a hard link is indistinguishable from the "original" > yet it must be so that the datas are linked-back to all the hard links > pointing on it, correct ?
hard link is a misnomer. All files are hard linked at least once, some just have more than one link. All data about a file except name including size, owner, date, etc., are stored in the inode. A directory is just a list of names and inodes. If two names have the same inode, you have a hard link. Neither name is more original or important than the other. After the fact, they cannot be distinguished. rm (and unlink) simply delete a name from a directory, not a file. The file itself is automatically deleted when the number of names pointing to it goes it zero.
