[Lazarus] Absolute paths on different platforms

Sven Barth pascaldragon at googlemail.com
Mon Jun 27 21:14:38 CEST 2011


On 27.06.2011 05:43, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> Sven Barth schrieb:
>
>>> Maybe, but when I "open" an shortcut to an folder, I get the folder
>>> contents, and its "properties" are the folder properties. Files may have
>>> different shortcuts/symlinks, but these can be replaced by hard links,
>>> in many cases (NTFS...).
>>
>> But not when you use normal Windows API functions. There a shortcut
>> file looks like a normal file. Window Explorer handles them in a
>> special way. This is THE difference to symlinks. On POSIX basic APIs
>> like "open" will be applied to the target of the symlink not the
>> symlink itself.
>
> NTFS *Reparse Points* allow for many modifications of "normal" file
> handling, beyond POSIX capabilities, and IMO including true hard and
> symbolic links (IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK).
>
> See also CopyFileEx, CreateHardLink, and CreateFile with e.g.
> FILE_FLAG_POSIX_SEMANTICS, COPY_FILE_COPY_SYMLINK or
> FILE_FLAG_OPEN_REPARSE_POINT.

Regarding those nice features of NTFS I definitely agree. Those are far 
more like POSIX symlinks.

But you were talking about shortcuts earlier as well and those are a 
different beast :P

Regards,
Sven




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