Not for nothing, but it's NTFS that supports hard (...) links, not NT/2K/XP, per se

True. Sorry... :-)

supports hard (not symbolic) links,

Actually thats not correct, DOS has supported SUBST for a long time which is a form of symbolic link (as is indeed the volume naming scheme in general, although granted this is not what one normally thinks of as a symlink) and the Win2k version of NTFS (so I wasnt realy wrong) supports junctions (symbolic links) through reparse points. You are correct however in that like hard links there are no standard tools for creating junctions. However the ever useful trove of MS power tools www.systeminternals.com has the tool junction which can create them. But windows explorer shows them as a standard directory, but cmd.exe does not.

Both hard and symbolic links (junctions) are illustrated in the following little cmd.exe trace. (D:\Development\test_funky\extra_level\my_symlink junctions D:\Development\test_funky\itsa_symlink)

D:\Development\test_funky>copy con here.txt
Test!
^Z
        1 file(s) copied.

D:\Development\test_funky>ln here.txt itsa_symlink\howzat.txt

D:\Development\test_funky>dir itsa_symlink
 Volume in drive D is DataStore
 Volume Serial Number is 2892-9D2C

 Directory of D:\Development\test_funky\itsa_symlink

18/03/02  13:15         <DIR>          .
18/03/02  13:15         <DIR>          ..
18/03/02  13:15                      7 howzat.txt
               1 File(s)              7 bytes
               2 Dir(s)   2,915,024,896 bytes free

D:\Development\test_funky>dir
 Volume in drive D is DataStore
 Volume Serial Number is 2892-9D2C

 Directory of D:\Development\test_funky

18/03/02  13:15         <DIR>          .
18/03/02  13:15         <DIR>          ..
18/03/02  12:50         <DIR>          extra_level
18/03/02  13:15                      7 here.txt
18/03/02  13:07         <JUNCTION>     itsa_symlink
               1 File(s)              7 bytes
               4 Dir(s)   2,915,024,896 bytes free

D:\Development\test_funky>type itsa_symlink\howzat.txt
Test!

D:\Development\test_funky>echo This too >>itsa_symlink\howzat.txt

D:\Development\test_funky>type here.txt
Test!
This too

D:\Development\test_funky>tree
Folder PATH listing for volume DataStore
Volume serial number is 0006FE80 2892:9D2C
D:.
+---extra_level
¦   +---my_junction
¦   +---my_link
+---itsa_symlink

D:\Development\test_funky>echo this as well >>extra_level\my_junction\
+howzat.txt

D:\Development\test_funky>type here.txt
Test!
This too
this as well

D:\Development\test_funky>
[download]

Sorry if this is off topic, but MS gets beaten up enough when they deserve it to be beaten up when they dont. ;-) Also you never know somebody out there might be just dying to know how to do junctions under W2k *even bigger grin*

Yves / DeMerphq
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