Re: how to make symbolic links?

[Mike Shal]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 8:09 AM, Paul Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> One last thing: it is NOT necessary that the target of a symlink exist!
> Just because you can create the link without error doesn't meant that
> the link can be resolved.  In fact a number of programs use this feature
> to good advantage, since creating a symlink is an atomic operation on
> the filesystem, for creating lock files, etc. where the target of the
> symlink is not a file at all, but rather some useful information related
> to the lock (etc.)  If the information you want to keep is small this is
> MUCH more efficient than open/write/close for a real file: it's one
> (atomic) system call.

Can you point to a specific program that uses symlinks in this way? I
never thought of using it like that - it sounds pretty inventive so
I'd like to see it in action :)

Thanks!
-Mike