Hard Link Oddity

[therube]

Hard Link Oddity

just throwing it out here

created a hard link of a file
renamed (the dropped link) from "name" to "xxx"
performed a test on xxx
completed
went to delete the link, xxx, & it would not, in use or something or the other
- unexpected, it should have deleted
did some other stuff
... not exactly sure ...
came back to it, this time the link deleted, xxx
orig file then showed a shortcut icon
- unexpected

deleted original file, file
file is gone (in Windows Explorer)
still seen in Everything ?
a new Everything window also sees it, but without the shortcut icon

?

Win7
794b x86
Link Shell Extension (LSE) 3.8.6.7


(I've never been comfortable with hard links in Windows, & might have something screwy with my LSE install...?)

[void]

You are probably hitting the current hard link monitoring limitation with Everything.

Everything will only pick up changes to the first hard link file name in the Master File Table.

Forcing a rebuild should rescan all hard links.

[therube]

went to delete the link, xxx, & it would not, in use or something or the other
- unexpected, it should have deleted

Maybe not unexpected.
Maybe what is unexpected is the way Windows deals with links (compared to say, UNIX).

Yep, that's it.

[therube]

You are probably hitting the current hard link monitoring limitation with Everything.

OK, that must be it.
When I search for "xxx", I can find the file, but when I search for "file", it is not found.

That can be messy, potentially.


Rarely use hardlinks in Windows, but now messing with some long file names, sometimes easier to make a link of the "file" rename it something short, "xxx", then do my work with xxx, deleting xxx when done, expecting "file" to persist - which it may or may not - in a way.

[void]

I will probably have to monitor the FRN for each file in Everything, or re-read the MFT for all the effected filenames for a USN Journal change (which is basically free as it's cached if it's recent).