Hard links to directories: why not?

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <1990Jul22.035130.12559 at zoo.toronto.edu> henry at zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <18461 at rpp386.cactus.org> jfh at rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>>Aren't there better things to worry about?  My favorite is why
>>doesn't the ln command require the use of a -f flag to blast a
>>target file?
>
>On sane Unix systems, ln fails if the target file exists already.  On
>AT&T System V UNIX(R) Operating Systems, it silently goes ahead.  Some
>faceless imbecile in the hordes of System V UNIX(R) Operating System
>developers thought it would be cute if ln, mv, and cp all worked the
>same way.

Well, now I get to ask the next question ...

My [ second ] favorite question is why doesn't the SunOS ln command
permit the use of the -f flag for blasting an existent target flag?

Before answering that question, remember that USG's stupid behavior
existed before Sun's and that in the business world, one stupid
decision deserves another ;-)
-- 
John F. Haugh II                             UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832                           Domain: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org