[Mageia-discuss] Symbolic links in Windows 7

Mon Jul 9 05:39:03 CEST 2012

On Sun, 08 Jul 2012 23:34:32 -0400
+andre999 <andre999mga at laposte.net> wrote:
+
+> Doug Laidlaw a écrit :
+> > I made this one from Linux.  I can't even see them in Windows.  They
+> > seem to count as hidden files.
+> >    
+> 
+> msw has had symbolic links not recognisable as such by Linux for a
+> long time, by default hidden under msw.
+> What you observe seems to indicate that msw7 has migrated to
+> unix-style symbolic links.
+> Interesting.  Gradually Microsoft is adopting more and more unix (and 
+> Linux-compatible) features.
+> 
+> (BTW, it would be easier for others to respond point by point if you
+> and others didn't top post.)
+
+Normally I don't.  But the first reply was top-posted, so I kept going
+in the same direction.
+
+Doug.
+> 
+> > Doug.
+> >
+> > On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 15:08:06 -0700
+> > Jeff Robins<jeffrobinssae at gmail.com>  wrote:
+> >
+> >    
+> >> NTFS has had symbolic links for a long time. I think since at least
+> >> win2k, but no one used them, even MS. I don't think you could even
+> >> make them with the normal tools.
+> >>
+> >> --Jeff
+> >> On Jul 8, 2012 7:37 AM, "Doug Laidlaw"<laidlaws at hotkey.net.au>
+> >> wrote:
+> >>
+> >>      
+> >>> Everybody probably knows this except me :(
+> >>>
+> >>> Browsing my new Windows 7 installation, I noticed a lot of
+> >>> symbolic links, identified by Linux as such.  AFAIK, this is new
+> >>> in Win7; it wasn't there in WinXP, which I have been using.
+> >>>
+> >>> I have just used this advantage to get around the following
+> >>> problem:
+> >>>
+> >>> Directories with spaces can be excluded in rsnapshot, by replacing
+> >>> the space with a ?, but a bug in rsync prevents directories with
+> >>> spaces from being backed up at all.  In the parent Windows
+> >>> directory, I created a symlink without spaces for the inaccessible
+> >>> sub-directory.  I was able to create it and add it
+> >>> to /etc/rsnapshot.conf, and the backup proceeded to completion.
+> >>> Changing the name of the subdirectory would probably have made it
+> >>> unusable by its Windows app.  If Windows hadn't allowed it, I
+> >>> would have put the link somewhere in Linux.
+> >>>        
+> 
+> You can also rename directories in msw, to remove spaces, or just
+> make shorter.
+> >>> Doug.
+> >>>
+> >>>        
+
+