# Let's have some fun with hardlinks and symlinks.

set -x

touch file # create a test file
stat file  # let's check how it looks

# To create a hard link, we can use the command ‹ln› (short for
# link). After a hard link is created, you can no longer tell which
# link is the original and which is ‘the link’: they are the same in
# all respects.

ln file hardlink # make ‹hardlink› refer to the same inode as ‹file›
stat file        # observe the link count and the inode number
stat hardlink    # same here

# We can now unlink the original file and see what happens?
rm file
stat hardlink    # this should be unchanged, save for link count
mv hardlink file # get back to where we started (‹mv› renames files)

mkdir dir
ln dir dirlink # this fails, directory hardlinking is forbidden

# Let's look at soft (symbolic) links now. They are created using
# ‹ln -s› (where ‹s› stands for soft/symbolic):

ln -s file softlink
ln -s dir dirlink

# Both these worked, let's look at stat:

stat softlink
stat dirlink

# There is one more command that is interesting with regards to symlinks:

readlink softlink
readlink dirlink
readlink dir # fails, ‹dir› is not a symlink

rm -df file dir dirlink softlink

# Let's look at some weird things that can happen with symlinks too:
#
#     $ micro badlink.sh