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Aliases and Symbolic Links

Aliases and symbolic links are lightweight references to files and folders. Aliases are associated with Mac OS Standard (HFS) and Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volume formats. Symbolic links are a feature of HFS+ and UFS file systems. Both aliases and symbolic links allow multiple references to files and folders without requiring multiple copies of these items. Prior to Mac OS X v10.2, aliases and symbolic links behaved very differently when a referenced file or folder moved or changed.

Contents:

Alias Semantics
Symbolic Link Semantics
Avoiding Broken Aliases

Alias Semantics

On HFS and HFS+ file systems, each file and folder has a unique, persistent identity. Aliases use this identity along with pathname information to find files and folders on the same volume.

In versions of Mac OS X before 10.2, aliases located a file or folder using its unique identity first and its pathname second. Beginning with Mac OS X 10.2, aliases reversed this search order by using the pathname first and unique identity second. This means that if you move a file and replace it with an identically named file, aliases to the original file now point to the new file. Similarly, if you move a file on the same volume (without replacing it), aliases use the unique identity information to locate the file.

When a file or folder moves, the alias may update either its path information or unique identity information to account for the change. If a file moves somewhere on the same volume, the alias updates its internal record with the new path information for the file. Similarly, if the original file is replaced by a file with the same name, but a different unique identity, the alias updates its internal record with the unique identity of the new file.

Symbolic Link Semantics

Because aliases use a file system path to resolve a file’s location initially, they now offer a similar behavior to symbolic links. Symbolic links rely exclusively on path information to locate a file. If you move a file somewhere on the same volume without replacing it, symbolic links to the file break while aliases do not. The only way to fix a symbolic link is to delete it and create a new one.

Avoiding Broken Aliases

The Finder and other system applications now use aliases with this pathname-first behavior. However, applications can still resolve aliases by unique identity first using the methods of the Alias Manager.

If your application supports versions of Mac OS X prior to Mac OS X v10.2, you should follow certain guidelines when modifying files. First, when editing a file, modify the existing file. Second, if you need to replace a file transparently with a new version, use FSExchangeObjects to swap the new file for the old one. The NSDocument class already uses similar techniques to update the document file, thus maintaining aliases whenever possible.

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