A memo about the differences between soft links and hard links.
I will add more if I remember other points.
| Item | Soft Link | Hard Link |
|---|
| size | 4 byte | Same as the original file (displayed) |
| inode | Has a different inode from the original file | Shares the same inode as the original file |
| Limit | - | Must be on the same filesystem as the original file |
You can see the difference in link size and inode number as shown below.
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| wenhanMBP: /tmp/link
→ ls -li
total 1024
12807105 -rw-r--r-- 1 shiwenhan wheel 524288 4 27 22:18 file
wenhanMBP: /tmp/link
→ ln file hardlink-to-file
wenhanMBP: /tmp/link
→ ls -li
total 2048
12807105 -rw-r--r-- 2 shiwenhan wheel 524288 4 27 22:18 file
12807105 -rw-r--r-- 2 shiwenhan wheel 524288 4 27 22:18 hardlink-to-file
wenhanMBP: /tmp/link
→ ln -s file softlink-to-file
wenhanMBP: /tmp/link
→ ls -lih
total 2056
12807105 -rw-r--r-- 2 shiwenhan wheel 512K 4 27 22:18 file
12807105 -rw-r--r-- 2 shiwenhan wheel 512K 4 27 22:18 hardlink-to-file
12807448 lrwxr-xr-x 1 shiwenhan wheel 4B 4 27 22:27 softlink-to-file -> file
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