From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Mar 1 23:10:37 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFB1A37BE70 for ; Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:10:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id RAA06478; Thu, 2 Mar 2000 17:38:23 +1030 (CST) Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 17:38:23 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: David Scheidt Cc: Mark Ovens , FreeBSD Chat Subject: Re: M$ one-ups UNIX??? Message-ID: <20000302173823.S2905@freebie.lemis.com> References: <20000302014342.B327@marder-1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] On Wednesday, 1 March 2000 at 23:00:50 -0600, David Scheidt wrote: > On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Mark Ovens wrote: > >> On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 10:07:10AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: >>> Just saw this on a NetBSD list. It looks like a good idea. We should >>> make sure that they don't implement it before we do. >>> >> >> :) Greg, can you nail down the year that symlinks first appeared in Unix? > > > HISTORY > An ln command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. The simplified > link command conforms to Version 2 of the Single UNIX > Specification. It's simpler than that: without links, there would be no files. The link just associates the directory entry with the inode. The only thing that UNIX added was a reference count, allowing multiple directory entries for a single file. That in itself was a stroke of genius, of course. > So ln(1) is coming up on its thirtieth birthday. > I don't remember when symlinks came into the picture. I'm pretty sure it was with ffs, which would have been 1982. Missed'em V didn't get them until V.4, effectively about 1989. When they finally got symlinks, they went mad with them. Greg -- When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the original text. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message