hardlinks for target files?

[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?

[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.

[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, ...)