Re: hard links and symbolic links
From: Barry Margolin (barmar_at_alum.mit.edu)
Date: 04/06/05
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Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 16:27:12 -0400
In article <d30svd$bp5$3@reader1.panix.com>,
Jeremiah DeWitt Weiner <jdw@panix.com> wrote:
> Francesco M. <fmarchioni@libero.it> wrote:
> > This raised 2 questions to me. Is anybody able to explain it ?
> > 1) Why symbolic links take more disk space then hard links ?
>
> This statement seems pretty odd to me: symlinks use an extra inode,
> but basically no disk space, where as hard links point to the same inode
> as the original file, so they don't take up another inode, but this is
> such a minor consideration, disk-space-wise, as to be of no consequence
> at all, unless maybe you had millions of links.
In many implementations, a symlink is stored like a normal file, with
the target information in the file contents. As a result, the symlink
uses up a whole disk block, which will mostly be wasted. It also uses
up an inode.
But you're right that this is not of much consequence these days, where
disks are measured in 10's or 100's of gigabytes. I expect the text the
OP quoted was written back when disk space was not nearly as plentiful.
-- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
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