Why aren't (hard) links to symbolic links allowed?

[Mitch Patenaude]

In article <874 at nlsun1.oracle.nl> bengsig at oracle.nl (Bjorn Engsig) writes:
[stuff deleted]
>........................... Shouldn't I be able to have more than one (hard)
>link to a file that happens to be a symbolic link?  If no, then why not?
  No.. in fact.. you don't even have one hard link... a symbolic link is 
just a specialized direcotry entry which makes reference to another 
filename (not even the i-node.. just the filename.. if the file it 
references  is moved or deleted.. the link does not follow it).. while a    
hard link makes another link to the i-node (and becomes indistinguishable
from the files it's linked to.) but the sybolic link has no i-node of it's
own.. only the referce to another file.. which is where the link is made.

>-- 
>Bjorn Engsig,	Domain:		bengsig at oracle.nl, bengsig at oracle.com
>		Path:		uunet!mcsun!orcenl!bengsig


-- Mitch Patenaude
    g-patena at steer.calstate.edu