See Win32::Shortcut. Unfortunately, that module includes no POD documentation so you'll probably also want to see google's take on it in order to find a nice example. Unforunately, the only good on-line documentation links that I found were all locked-out or illegal links to O'Reilly book contents. So just grab the libwin32 distribution from cpan (follow the first link I gave), unpack it, and then load Shortcut/docs/reference.html into your local browser).

It's not nice that it doesn't show up in ActiveState's documentation tree, though the .pm file is there. A stub would be better! Just list the "obvious to use" methods with a note saying "see the Win32 docs".

use strict;
use warnings;
my $file = 'C:/tmp/file1.txt';
my $link = 'C:/tmp/link_to_file1.txt';
link $file, $link or die "Cannot link $link to $file:$!\n";
[download]

--
Regards,
Helgi Briem
helgi AT decode DOT is

Have you tried this?

perlport says

link OLDFILE,NEWFILE

Not implemented. (Mac OS, MPE/iX, VMS, RISC OS)

Link count not updated because hard links are not quite that hard (They are sort of half-way between hard and soft links). (AmigaOS)

Hard links are implemented on Win32 (Windows NT and Windows 2000) under NTFS only.

I tried it, and after changing the original, the changes aren't reflected. Looks like it's just a plain-old copy.

I believe NTFS supports this (cause I read http://www.hlm.inc.ru/ ), but I don't believe perl(activeperl5.6 at least) implements it.

update: some links
Securiteam: [NT] NTFS Hard Links Subvert Auditing
CreateHardlink

update: Well, after looking through my \perl directory, I do find `CreateHardlink' in perl56.dll, so I don't know what's up. I still believe the implementation must be off, cause I create a file, I create a link to it using perl, I append something to , view the file, view the link, and they're different.

update: Whoa, after installing HardLinkMagic, and creating another link to my test file, it worked. This is very bizzare, veeeeeery bizzare.

update: your tests run fine now. I just dragged the files/hardlinks over to notepad, and it just didn't work the first time around. This was just weird (yes I do have NTFS, i checked ;D).

____________________________________________________
** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

Yes, I tested it. Here is an even more through test that worked perectly on my platform, Win2K, NTFS, Activeperl 5.6.1:

use warnings;
use strict;
my $file = 'C:/tmp/filename1.txt';

open IN, $file or die "Cannot open $file for reading:$!\n";
print "Contents of $file before linking:\n";
print while (<IN>); 
close IN;

my $link = 'C:/tmp/link.txt';
if (-e $link) { unlink $link or die $!; }

link $file,$link or die "Cannot link $link to $file:$!\n";

open LINK, $link or die $!;
print "Contents of $link after linking:\n";
print while (<LINK>);
close LINK;

open (OUT, ">>", $file) or die "Cannot open $file for writing:$!\n";
print OUT "Additional content\n";
close OUT; 

open IN, $file or die $!;
print "Coontents of $file after updating:\n";
print while (<IN>);
close IN;

open LINK, $link or die "Cannot open $link:$!\n";
print "Contents of $link after updating:\n";
print while (<LINK>);
close LINK;
[download]

Printed output:

Contents of C:/tmp/filename1.txt before linking:
Original contents
Contents of C:/tmp/link.txt after linking:
Original contents
Coontents of C:/tmp/filename1.txt after updating:
Original contents
Additional content
Contents of C:/tmp/link.txt after updating:
Original contents
Additional content
[download]

As you can see, the link is maintained. YMMV on other platforms.

--
Regards,
Helgi Briem
helgi AT decode DOT is