hard links in windows

Is there such a thing as a hard link with windows?

If so how can one be made?

umm... ever heard of a shortcut? You can make a link to almost any file/directory you want (where most Linux distros will not allow you to use the ln command to make a hard link to a directory).

To make a shortcut to any file/folder, right-click and drag a file/folder in any direction. Three options should pop-up and one is to make a shortcut to the item you just dragged. Click and wa-la!

Yes, there are hard links in Windows (only on NTFS). They are not equivalent to shortcuts.

They work like Unix hard links and was implemented in NTFS to make it POSIX-compatible

Even though no Windows GUI uses hard links, you can create them with the function

Code:

---

BOOL CreateHardLink(
  LPCTSTR lpFileName,
  LPCTSTR lpExistingFileName,
  LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpSecurityAttributes
);

---

the security attributes must be NULL, and the other two parameters should be very easy to understand.

I used this a long time ago to fake-share in some file sharing program. They are impossible (unlike linux hardlinks) to distinguish from 'normal' files.

excellent! Thankyou sang drax that is exactly what I was after.

Yes, i have heard of shortcuts, but if that was what I was asking I would have said symlinks in windows. I would like a program to exist in multiple places with different names, but I was hoping to be more efficient than copying it all over the place. Program has to get its name from argv[0] so shortcuts are out. But thankyou anyway ober.

??? You can still send command line arguments to a program with a shortcut!! Don't make something harder than it has to be.

really? I didnt know that, I hadn't even considered it but I will now. It would certainly add the advantage of portablility to fat.

Will argv[0] show up the name of the program or the name of the shortcut?

argv[0] will hold the name of the program even if invoked with the shortcut....

>>Will argv[0] show up the name of the program or the name of the shortcut?
Just try it and see! You shouldn't really rely on argv[0] for the process name, try something like GetModuleFileName (if available!)

So, to clarify your question, if you have a program and a link, like so:
c:\dirA\prog1.exe
c:\dirB\prog1.exe.lnk
... do you want argv[0] to display the same for both, or to be different?