On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 08:28, Jan Wilson wrote: > * Anne Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [030613 05:58]: > > I have just realised that if yoiu use kde's 'create a link here', you > > get a hard link. Now I may have completely misunderstood the whole > > theory, but I thought that when you want to make what windows calls a > > shortcut, you really want a soft link? > > Probably. Hard links DO have some nice uses, for example making > successive backups. By copying hard links you can automatically make > real copies only of only the files that have changed. > > > With this in mind, I set out to try to correct the situation. I have, > > for instance a desktop icon called Graphics, which should simply put > > me into /Graphics. This is what happened: > > So you want a link named Graphics, pointing to a directory named /Graphics, > right? > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] anne]$ ln -s Graphics /Graphics > > ln: creating symbolic link `/Graphics/Graphics' to `Graphics': > > Operation not permitted > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] anne]$ > > You know, it took a long time before I got unconfused about that, > myself. What you want is: > > ln -s <target the link will point to> <name of link> > > This seems somehow backwards, and the man page uses terms that didn't > make it clear, at least for me. > > > OK - obviously there's something I haven't understood. Not least, > > 'why' it's not permitted. I thought that it would overwrite the > > existing link/icon. Is that not so, or is there some other aspect > > that I have misunderstood? > > If there is an existing file, directory, or link with the same name, > you will have to delete it first. ln won't overwrite an existing file > name. And remember, EVERYTHING in Linux is a file ;-)
I'm still struggling to remember this. Reminds me of my MS-DOS days, back in the late '80s when I was using PKZIP at the command line level. It took me a while to remember that you place the name of the archive you are creating before the name of the files you are placing in the archive. Seemed backward to me then. Hmmm...wanna bet the authors/founders of PKZIP/PKWARE were *nix users? ;0] T
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