Bourne Again Shell

Shell program named after Jason Bourne not really

Soft links affect the inode, the inode is all the meta info about each file on a system, analogus to an index.

view files inodes with ls -lia

create a soft link

ln -s <file-to-link> <soft-link-name>

A soft link has a different inode number and permissions, it points to your file, analogus to a shortcut. If you change the symlink contents it will also change the file contents. However if you delete the file it points to, the symlink will not allow you to open the file, as none exists. It is now just an empty pointer. Also this allows you to link directories.

create a hard link

ln <file-to-link> <hard-link-name>

A hard link has the same inode number and permissions, it essentially mirrors your file, when you make changes to the original file, or the hard link, both copies will change. Removing either will not destroy the other. Hard links cannot link directories, only files.