Dan Stromberg <drsali...@gmail.com> writes: > On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au>wrote: > > > Dan Stromberg <drsali...@gmail.com> writes: > > > > > It's been suggested that […] if people had added symlinks first, > > > no one would've bothered adding hardlinks. > > > > Well, that suggestion is faulty. It ignores the fact that *all* > > ordinary files on Unix are hard links. Any ordinary file entry in a > > directory is a hard link to the file's data. > > Not really. Whether hard links is supported is mostly a matter of what > filesystem you are using - in modern times. It's true that filesystems > with complete POSIX semantics probably all support hardlinks, but > that's far from every file on any given *ix. And of course, POSIX > doesn't appear to have been created until the late 1990's.
POSIX didn't create those semantics, though; it formalised semantics that were already long-time convention. My only point was that, unlike symbolic links, hard linking isn't some added feature, it's a property of the way Unix filesystems represent normal files. And you're right that I mean “on filesystems with POSIX semantics”. > It's much easier to imagine a system with no hardlinks, than to > imagine a system with no symlinks. Why imagine? There have been many of both. -- \ “But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have | `\ examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.” | _o__) —Carl Sagan, _The Burden of Skepticism_, 1987 | Ben Finney _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
