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From: markz@microsoft.UUCP (Mark Zbikowski)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: RE: links in DOS
Message-ID: <8776@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 12:47:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: microsof.8776
Posted: Mon Aug 19 12:47:36 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 06:57:10 EDT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Lines: 14

> [The question is whether, under MS-DOS, one can give a file multiple names
> as with the Unix link call.]
>
> Yes, you can, but no, you shouldn't.  It is fairly easy to patch a DOS
> directory so that you have more than one name pointing to the same chain
> of disk blocks.  It's a bad idea, though, because DOS doesn't expect there to
> be more than one name for a file and if you delete any of the names, all of
> the blocks for the file will be marked free and reused.

The main problem with doing this is that when DOS needs to update a directory
entry (grow a file, change last-mod time) it needs to be able to QUICKLY
locate the directory entry.  If there are several directory entries the task
of finding them is much more difficult.  Linking them together is not
reasonable; trying to repair such problems after a crash is difficult at best.