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Postings from May 2003
On Sun, 04 May 2003 18:38:05 -0700, Robert Spier <rspier@pobox.com> wrote: >> But that's the point - shortcuts == symlinks on windows. In fact, in >> many ways shortcuts > symlinks. They are symlinks + a bunch of extra >> metadata, and they are used exactly like symlinks on windows. > >See, this is where you are wrong. shortcuts != symlinks. symlinks >are a _file system_ level thingy. symlinks exist only at the >application level. (i.e. "Explorer" and things that use Explorer >libraries.) If Microsoft had intended them to work TRANSPARENTLY like >symlinks do they would have implemented them that way. Making >shortcuts non-transparent was a DECISION by Microsoft which you are >now second guessing. You are absolutely right, Shell Links[1] are *not* supposed to work as symlinks on Windows. The closest you can get to Unix style symlink semantics are NTFS Reparse Points[2], which unfortunately only work at the volume and directory level, but not on a per file basis. They were introduced in NTFS version 5, meaning Windows 2000 and later. I don't see much value in special support for reparse points in Perl itself. Cheers, -Jan [1] Shell Links http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_int/shell_int_programming/shortcuts/shortcut.asp?frame=true [2] Reparse Points http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/base/reparse_points.asp?frame=trueThread Previous | Thread Next