[ILUG] MS invented symbolic links!

[Caolan McNamara]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 02.03.00, 16:09:24, Donncha O Caoimh 
<donncha.ocaoimh at tradesignals.com> wrote regarding [ILUG] MS invented 
symbolic links!:


> This is funny :)

> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/02-28w2k.asp


Surely it would be a hard link so if one gets deleted then the other 
one will remain ?
Anyhow you could half implement this for pretty much any unix os in a 
very short period of time i.e. a find script that computes the md5 
hash of each file, sort the list, 
when there are duplicate entries then delete all but one and hard link 
the deleted names to the remaining duplicate... easy peasy, catch 
would be that any attempt to modify a duplicate would change the 
original which would not be the desired transparent behaviour, and 
secondly linux won't allow hard links between different mounts, but 
that would be small beans in the general scheme of things... If you 
wanted Im sure you could add a "middling link" to linux which treats 
modification of one of the links the same as a hard link treats a 
deletion of one of its links. Decrement the count but create a copy   
as well and off you go... Pretty much in the spirit of copy on write 
memory accesses.

But nonetheless I am suspicious at the gains they claim to have 
received to say the least.

C.


> Donncha.

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