I have spent the past hour or so trying Super Search and not finding a clear answer, so I ask my fellow monks how best to portably determine if two seemingly different names actually refer to the same physical file?

I am not concerned about copies of the same file, only links, such that the same physical file appears under multiple names.

On POSIX, the solution is easy: compare dev:ino tuples from the stat builtin and declare "same file" if they match. I have no idea if this also works on Windows or even if the problem exists on Windows — how well does Windows handle symlinks anyway and does it even support hardlinks at all?

And what of the less-common platforms?

Cross-posted in Categorized Questions and Answers at How do I portably determine if two filenames refer to the same file? as a place to collect answers for future reference.

Edited 2019-08-16 by jcb: Clarify that stat refers to the Perl builtin. I had forgotten about the shell command with the same name.

In reply to Portable way to determine if two names refer to the same file? by jcb

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