[OT] Hardlinks and directories

[Tom H]

> A hard link is a directory entry that references an inode. Every
> property of the file is represented in the inode, including its type,
> ownership, permissions, size and pointers to the actual data, i.e. the
> directory entry is simply a (name, inode) pair. As such, there can be
> multiple directory entries referencing the same inode.
...
> Soft links are similar to "aliases" on Windows. AFAIK Windows has no
> concept analogous to hard links.

Windows has had hard links since either Win2k or WinXP and calls them
junction points. AFAIK, they are only used in a default install in
WinVista and Win7 to hard link to/from deprecated user dirs.