[net.unix-wizards] are links as useful...

dave@murphy.UUCP (H. Munster) (11/01/86)

Summary: around here, symlinks save a lot of disk space
Line eater: yep

In article <1059@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu 
  (System Mangler) types:

>Symbolic links are too expensive to use freely.  They take up
>an inode and 1K of disk space, just to hold a few characters.
>They carry all the baggage of a regular inode (atime, mtime,
>links, owner, group, mode) but you can't make proper use of
>any of it.

That may be, but I've rather have a symbolic link taking up a 1k block
than make a copy of a 10M file.
---
It's been said by many a wise philosopher that when you die and your soul
goes to its final resting place, it has to make a connection in Atlanta.

Dave Cornutt, Gould Computer Systems, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
UUCP:  ...{sun,pur-ee,brl-bmd}!gould!dcornutt
 or ...!ucf-cs!novavax!houligan!dcornutt
ARPA: wait a minute, I've almost got it...

"The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer,
not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary."

guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (11/05/86)

> That may be, but I've rather have a symbolic link taking up a 1k block
> than make a copy of a 10M file.

That may be, but if you'd read Don Speck's original article carefully, you'd
have seen that he did NOT suggest doing away with symbolic links; he
suggested that they be implemented as a different kind of directory entry -
one containing two path names, presumably - rather than as a different kind
of inode.
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com (or guy@sun.arpa)