Quote:
Originally Posted by j.p.s
Symbolic links are cheap, and hard links are even cheaper. (Of course M$ defines hard links as file system corruption.)
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Symlinks may be cheap however under Windows, they break when the target is moved. I believe Linux has the same behaviour but have never tested it. Junctions have the nasty side effect under Windows that when the junction is deleted so is the target. As for hard links? You get a similar nasty side effect that deleting the last hard link also deletes the target and you can't hardlink to a different volume nor can you use a program to edit a file that creates a temporary working file and then renames the temp file as the hard link will still point to the original unmodified file. I won't even bother to do more than mention that Windows requires using NTFS for the file system.
Again, why bother when a database and search capability gives better functionality and no need for user intervention creating directory structures and maintaining them.
OTOH, I have never seen a hard link detected as file system corruption from Windows 7 onward (I never used Vista or XP and hard links). Can you give an example? And please don't mention that editing a file using different paths simultaneously can cause file corruption as that is specifically warned against by Microsoft.