[X-Unix] Backup and Restore of Symbolic Links

[Jerry Krinock]

on 06/12/07 23:05, Stroller at macmonster at myrealbox.com wrote:

> "The data in" is, if you'll excuse me saying, a poor choice of words
> for the path described by the symlink. From a program or user's point
> of view the data in Alink is whatever you see when you `cat Alink` or
> double-click on the symlink.

Yes, I should have said "the contents of the symlink's data fork; what you
see when you look at the symlink's data fork with a hex file editor like
HexEdit or Hex Fiend".

> This is why one can describe symlinks by relative path.
> 
> Compare:
> 
>    $ ls -l bar*
>    lrwxr-xr-x   1 stroller  stroller   7 Dec  8 07:02 bar -> foo.txt
>    lrwxr-xr-x   1 stroller  stroller   9 Dec  8 07:03 bar2 -> ./foo.txt
>    lrwxr-xr-x   1 stroller  stroller  23 Dec  8 07:03 bar3 -> /Users/
> stroller/foo.txt
>    $ pwd
>    /Users/stroller
>    $

Thanks.  I didn't realize you could put relative paths in there like that.