I have a script that occasionally does something like this
ln file1 file2
that makes it so the contents of file1 are the same as of file2, and if you change the contents of 1, the other
changes accordingly.
I can slo do this
ln -s file1 files
which is somewhat similar, but of course works over file systems and file2 is really just a symbolic link to file1.
Anyway, sometimes I want to undo what I did, but I can't say
unlink file2
because that will remove file2. I just want it , so that the files are still the same but if I change one, the other will
not change (i.e., inodes are different but diff shows no differences). I can't see any flags for ln. Anyone have
any idea? I know it can be fudged like
sed -i 's/ / /g' file1
but this is kind of fudging, and it may not work on binary files.
another question. If you have a file FILE1 can you find everything that is linked
to it? say you have
ln -s /this/is/filesystem/1/FILE1 /filesystem/2/FILE2
given FILE1 can you find FILE2? It is pretty easy the other way around (readlink FILE2) but that does
not work for FILE1. Also if "ln" instead of "ln -s" you cannot do it.
I guess you could do ls -i /this/is/filesystem/1/FILE1, get the inum and then do a
find / -type f -inum x # Whatever the inum is
