Links, Chains, Ropes

(the difference between Hard links and Symbolic links)

Let’s discuss Hard link and Symbolic links and also explain the difference between the two as simple as can be. Hard, soft and/or symbolic links all play a part in a file system from directories to files to pathways. Here is the clear definition of Hard Link; “is a directory entry that associates a name with a file on a file system. All directory-based file systems must have (at least) one hard link giving the original name for each file. The term “hard link” is usually only used in file systems that allow more than one hard link for the same file.” a hard link is created by using the following syntax; ln (source) (link), source is the existing file and link will be the name (hardlink) of the file you will create and ln command stands for creating links between files.

Now that we touched the surface let me discuss a symbolic link; “A symbolic link contains a text string that is automatically interpreted and followed by the operating system as a path to another file or directory. This is created by using the ln command but adding -s flag which stands for symbol basically. Your command would look like this ln -s target_path link_path.

The difference between the two is that a Hard link creates another file with a link to the same underlying inode (inode is a data structure that stores all information about a file) you are not able to delete Hard links but you can with Symbolic links it just links to another name in the file system and can cross file systems Hard links cannot being that they must refer to a file in the same system.