Hard links to directories: why not?

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <1990Jul19.121048.16332 at cbnews.att.com> mvadh at cbnews.att.com (andrew.d.hay) writes:
>it would be easy to have ln disallow this:
>1)	resolve argv[1] and argv[2] to absolute paths
>2)	determine which path is shorter
>3)	strncmp() both paths for the shorter length
>4)	if you have a match, you're trying to create a loop
>
>this would also let you safely mv directories...

So, how does this relate to the link() system call?  Permitting
a non-tree-like structure to exist is a really bad idea for all
of the reasons in the Dennis Ritchie quote.

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?
-- 
John F. Haugh II                             UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
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