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hardlinks for target files?

Posted: June 11th, 2020, 19:32
by Harry
I just had the idea that it could be really nice, to have the option for target folders, beside copy and move, to hardlink the files ("mklink /h <file> <target dir>"). This way It would be very easy to create folders with favorites/special purpose without the need for more space on disk or having a lot of (unwanted) duplets afterwards.

What do you think?

Posted: July 21st, 2020, 00:29
by Tom
Generally I'm open to ideas like this and it'd be a nice niche feature, but I've worked with hard links, symbolic links for files/folders, and directory junctions quite a bit and found especially the first two to be somehow unreliable in behavior. I work at the console level a lot and I use directory junctions all the time, but I don't feel comfortable using hard/symbolic links on a daily basis, implementing code for them, or explaining to users who misunderstand the feature what it is about.

I'd rather not touch this topic for the time being until a real need arises. Hope you understand.

Posted: July 21st, 2020, 04:29
by Harry
Ok yes I understand that this could be confusing for people who are not aware how file systems work. ^^

Though, I still love this Idea and would really appreciate if it could be possible some day.
Maybe one of this options could be less confusing for some folks?:
  • Implement this function via an explicite opt-in "enable hidden/developer feature" checkbox in options (or even more hidden just written manually in a local config file)
  • Or implement it indirectly via new "custom operation", which has a textbox as option, where users can write in a custom command (with argument variables for the selected files) to process the files.
    This then could be used for mklink for some few special user like me :) or just send the files to every other programm other users like to use (favourite editor, archive, e-mail, ...)