I just found out that Windows 2000 and XP have hard links and symbolic links, just like Unix. But Windows doesn’t expose those features in the user interface. Dang it, I could have been using links for the past 5 years! Thankfully, some enterprising programmers have created utilities for creating and removing symbolic links (called junction points in Windows) and hard links:
- NTFS Link, by Michael Elsdörfer, integrates handling links into Windows Explorer
- Junction, by Mark Russinovich, is a command-line tool
Also, take a look at the article Windows Symbolic and Hard Links to find out all about hard links and symbolic links, why they’re so nifty in the first place, and why they’re a lot better than shortcut files.