Windows Vista to support symbolic links
According to a comment by Mike Stanclift over at Neowin, a feature Unix/Linux users have had for some time will be included in Windows Vista when it ships next year.
Ward Ralston, the developer who wrote the code explains on the TechNet blog about this new feature and how it differs from a shortcut.
“In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new file system object (examples of existing file system objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link). So then you ask how is that different from a short-cut (the .lnk file)? Well, a shortcut will only work when used from within the Windows shell, it is a construct of the shell, and other apps don’t understand short-cuts. To other apps, short-cuts look just like a file. With symbolic links, this concept is taken and is implemented within the file system. Apps when they open a symbolic link will now open the target by default (i.e. what the link points to), unless they explicitly ask for the symbolic link itself to be opened. Note symbolic links are an NTFS feature.”
I hope that’s clear to our non-geek readers.
[Source: Neowin]
Related Stories
POSTED IN: IE7, Microsoft, Windows Vista
1 opinion for Windows Vista to support symbolic links
Technosailor » ln -s music “c:documents and settingsaaronmy documentsmy music”
Nov 10, 2005 at 4:01 pm
[…] If you don’t know what that does, then brace yourself. It is a symbolic link, a tool that we have had in Linux and Unix for some time but that is sadly lacking in Windows. The Windows Vista blog is reporting, though, that the next version of Windows will come with symbolic link support. […]
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: