[Info-vax] Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-07-14 14:55, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 7/13/2023 9:25 AM, bill wrote:
>> On 7/13/2023 1:50 AM, gah4 wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 3:46:45 PM UTC-7, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>>>> [...] For example, gzip, gunzip, zcat, and gzcat, are all the
>>>>> same file, but do different things based on argv[0].
>>>> Common in the past, but the GNU folks decided against that scheme
>>>> some time ago. (At least a dozen years?)
> 
>>> A MacBook Air with OS 10.12.6 has two different files, not linked,
>>> but with exactly the same contents.
>>>
>>> ls -li compress uncompress
>>> 421074 -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  27680 Jul 14  2017 compress
>>> 421907 -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  27680 Jul 14  2017 uncompress
>>> and cmp -l shows that they are the same.
>>>
>>> FreeBSD does use the hard links, and also Linux.
>>> The Linux system is 13 years old, so doesn't disagree with your dozen 
>>> years.
>>
>> Which is yet another example of "throw more hardware at the problem".
>> A link would save the space, but who cares.
> 
> We can discuss the optimal choice between:
> * paying more dollars to get bigger disk
> * the complexity of programs with multiple behavior depending on name
> 
> But I don't think that is the case here. I think the case is that
> the cheapest disk you can buy for new systems are so big that there
> is enough space, so no money is saved by adding the complexity of
> multiple behaviors.

I think you missed the point.

In this case, the program does deal with the different behaviors 
depending on under which name it is invoked. It's identical binaries.

The issue is just that you could have had just one copy of the program, 
but they installed two. For absolutely zero difference except they use 
up more disk space.

   Johnny