Emacs Breaks Hard Links
I was quite irritated when I found out yesterday that Emacs is breaking hardlinks: Edit a file with two hard links in Emacs, save it and you will end up with two different files.
$ echo abc >first $ ln first second $ ll -i total 8 401320 -rw-r–r– 2 first first 4 Jul 15 15:04 first 401320 -rw-r–r– 2 first first 4 Jul 15 15:04 second $ emacs first $ ll -i total 12 401322 -rw-r–r– 1 first first 17 Jul 15 15:05 first 401320 -rw-r–r– 2 first first 4 Jul 15 15:04 first~ 401320 -rw-r–r– 2 first first 4 Jul 15 15:04 second $ cat first abc another line $ cat second abc
The reason for this is Emacs renames the original file to first~ and creates a new file first which is not hard-linked to second anymore. I am not sure if this behaviour is such a good idea...