On Wed, 18 Aug 2021 16:19:18 -0500, Mike Schwab wrote: >A symbolic link is an alternate name to another file or directory. >Kind of like an alias to a PDS member. > "Kind of". In particular, a symlink can be created before the target exists and persists after the target is deleted, like a classic PDS (not PDSE) alias. And unlike a PDS alias, a symlink can refer to another directory, or a member in another directory.
And catalog aliases? Symbolic aliases can be created before their targets exist. But for some ineffable reason are required to contain at least one substitutable symbol. >On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 3:31 PM Tom Brennan wrote: >> >> I don't know. Even in Windows such a method might require the full path >> in the supplied shortcuts, which would be a problem. > "Even"? Symlinks can be relative, like URLs. The HTML index to the doc .pdf simply worked, regardless of where I extracted the arrchive. > ... Another method >> would be for IBM to provide a script that builds the shortcuts, and of >> course that could be different code depending on the platform. >> That had best be a POSIX shell script, supported by Win 1o(?), Linux, MacOS, and z/OS. The latter three don't support .bat or .vba. >> ... symlinks. I only use them when necessary >> in Linux and basically have little idea how they work. ln -s is about >> all I ever do, and even with that I get the source/target names >> backwards almost every time. >> How do shortcuts work? MacOS has symlinks, which work as aliases, and aliases, which don't work as symlinks. Windows has shortcuts, and, lately, symlinks. I was astonished and dismayed to learn that mklink required admin authority. Why? Cygwin has its own symlinks because the Windows alternatives aren't POSIX-conformant. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
