Just curious: why is /usr/bin/python not a symlink?

Jerry Hill malaclypse2 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 23 14:24:23 EST 2012


On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 2:11 PM, HoneyMonster <someone at someplace.invalid> wrote:
> $ cd /usr/bin
> $ ls -l python*
> -rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 9496 Oct 27 02:42 python
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    6 Oct 29 19:34 python2 -> python
> -rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 9496 Oct 27 02:42 python2.7
> $ diff -s  python python2.7
> Files python and python2.7 are identical
> $
>
> I'm just curious: Why two identical files rather than a symlink?

It's not two files, it's a hardlink.  You can confirm by running ls
-li python* and comparing the inode numbers.

-- 
Jerry



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