From: cgf@bbc.com (Chris Faylor) Subject: Re: cygnus' notion of symbolic links 2 Dec 1997 13:47:36 -0800 Message-ID: References: <34834DFF.7566F4CF@synopsys.com> Reply-To: cgf@bbc.com To: gnu-win32@cygnus.com In article <34834DFF.7566F4CF@synopsys.com>, B. Elizabeth Trojan wrote: >Can someone explain how symbolic links work using the Cygnus >ln -s command? A file is written with a special 'cookie' at the beginning followed by a path spec. The path spec is the location of the file to which the link refers. In coolview and B19 versions of cygwin, symbolic links also have the 'system' attribute set. The file is not read at all if this attribute is not set. This speeds up checking for symbolic links. As you may be able to see from this brief description, symbolic links are entirely a cygwin construction. You can't use them with native windows programs. -- http://www.bbc.com/ cgf@bbc.com "Strange how unreal VMS=>UNIX Solutions Boston Business Computing the real can be." - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".