Difference between Symbolic Link and Hard Link in Linux settings

First of all the differences between the Symbolic links and the Hard links is that the symbolic links are usually an alternative path for the original file like a shortcut and hard links directly link two files in the same file system and for identification it uses file’s inode number. Hard link can only be created for a file. When an original file gets deleted soft link becomes invalid whereas, a hard link is valid even if the target file is deleted.

To create a symbolic file remember to create a folder and create a file in it. Now we will use the following command.

$ ln -s file1.file symlink.file

To create a hard link we will use the following command.

$ ln file1.file hardlink.file