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Just curious: why is /usr/bin/python not a symlink?

Thomas Rachel nutznetz-0c1b6768-bfa9-48d5-a470-7603bd3aa915 at spamschutz.glglgl.de
Fri Feb 24 02:47:55 EST 2012 
Am 23.02.2012 20:54 schrieb Jerry Hill:

> If I recall
> correctly, for directories, that's the number of entries in the
> directory.

No. It is the number of subdirectories (it counts their ".." entries) 
plus 2 (the parent directory and the own "." entry).


> Even with that, it's hard to tell what files are hardlinked together,
> and figuring it out by inode is a pain in the neck.  Personally, I
> prefer symlinks, even if they introduce a small performance hit.

Not only that, they have slightly different semantics. With hardlinks 
you can say "I want this file, no matter if someone else holds it as 
well". Symlinks say "I want the file which is referred to by there".

In the given case, however, this difference doesn't count, and I agree 
on you that a symlink would be better here.


Thomas
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