What is there behind a symbolic link?
How are symbolic links managed internally by UNIX/Linux systems. It is known that a symbolic link may exist even without an actual target file (Dangling link). So what is that which represents a symbolic link internally. In Windows, the answer is a reparse point . Questions: Is the answer an inode in UNIX/Linux? If yes, then will the inode number be same for target and links? If yes, can the link inode can have permissions different from that of target's inode (if one exists)? jm666 It is not about UNIX/Linux but about filesystem implementation - but yes, Unix/Linux uses inodes at kernel level