Create symbolic links or junctions instead of copy.
Posted: 04.12.2012, 08:03
Hello all,
I think it would be extremely helpful to implement such a feature: When you open the copy menu, to have a checkbox saying "Create symbolic links (for files) or junctions (for folders) instead of copying."
Windows XP already implemented junctions (symbolic links for folders)
Windows 7 also has the cool feature of making symbolic links to files. To me, that's the biggest feature of Windows 7 after the 4GB memory limit fix.
The applications of symbolic links are innumerable. I will give just a few examples:
- You have a folder with sub-folders containing animation movies, organized by producer (Pixar, Dreamworks, etc.). Then you want to make another folder where you keep the movies organized by the year of release. Therefore each year folder will contain just symbolic links.
- You have a folder with cartoons, sorted by title and you want to create folders with cartoons that feature Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc. If a cartoon contains all three of the characters, you keep it where it is, and you just create symbolic links to that cartoon, in all the three folders.
- You filter the files in a folder and you want to inspect those files. Instead of copying them into another folder and then inspecting them one by one, you simply make symbolic links to those files and you can inspect them. Say you want to inspect 15 movies from 100, instead of copying 15 big files of 2GB each, you just create symbolic links on the other folder, saving a lot of disk space and time.
In all the cases above, it would be extremely useful to have the option to quickly create symbolic links.
Not sure how many people realize how useful symbolic links are, but I suspect most of the people won't realize what a powerful feature they are until a file manager will implement it. Going in the command line to create symbolic links will not become popular anytime soon.
Thanks
I think it would be extremely helpful to implement such a feature: When you open the copy menu, to have a checkbox saying "Create symbolic links (for files) or junctions (for folders) instead of copying."
Windows XP already implemented junctions (symbolic links for folders)
Windows 7 also has the cool feature of making symbolic links to files. To me, that's the biggest feature of Windows 7 after the 4GB memory limit fix.
The applications of symbolic links are innumerable. I will give just a few examples:
- You have a folder with sub-folders containing animation movies, organized by producer (Pixar, Dreamworks, etc.). Then you want to make another folder where you keep the movies organized by the year of release. Therefore each year folder will contain just symbolic links.
- You have a folder with cartoons, sorted by title and you want to create folders with cartoons that feature Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc. If a cartoon contains all three of the characters, you keep it where it is, and you just create symbolic links to that cartoon, in all the three folders.
- You filter the files in a folder and you want to inspect those files. Instead of copying them into another folder and then inspecting them one by one, you simply make symbolic links to those files and you can inspect them. Say you want to inspect 15 movies from 100, instead of copying 15 big files of 2GB each, you just create symbolic links on the other folder, saving a lot of disk space and time.
In all the cases above, it would be extremely useful to have the option to quickly create symbolic links.
Not sure how many people realize how useful symbolic links are, but I suspect most of the people won't realize what a powerful feature they are until a file manager will implement it. Going in the command line to create symbolic links will not become popular anytime soon.
Thanks