Re: Symbolic instead of hard link as crosspost-link-function?

[Scott Blachowicz <scott@statsci.com>]

Steve Baumgarten <sbb@panix.com> wrote:

> For what it's worth, aliases in MacOS work much better than symbolic
> links.  For one thing, you can move the thing that's pointed to and
> the alias can still be resolved.  You can also rename the the thing
> that's pointed to -- and still the alias is resolved.

That's better?  What if you want the reference to be _symbolic_ - that is,
not to a particular thing, but to that thing's name?

Say, I have this:

    make
    make.new
    gmake -> make

then I do [the equivalent of]

    mv make make.old
    mv make.new make

Does that mean that gmake now points to make.old?

> You can create an alias of a remote server volume, copy it to a floppy
> disk, take the floppy down to the hall to another Mac (on the same
> network, of course), put it in, double-click it, and mount the volume
> there. 

Cool.

> The Mac is in need of many, many improvements, but aliases are cool
> and really work much better than symbolic links. 

They appear to work _differently_ (and probably better for most
situations).

Scott Blachowicz  Ph: 206/283-8802x240   Mathsoft (Data Analysis Products Div)
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