Is a file an alias?

[Kay C Lan]

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 3:48 AM, David Bovill <david at openpartnership.net>
wrote:

> Oh! - I thought the Mac Alias was a symbolic link. What's the difference?
>

Well from wikipedia it basically says that a symlink is just a text file
which contains the relative or absolute path  to another file/folder/app. If
that file/folder/app is moved then the link is broken. A Mac alias contains
various data, and along with some OS algorithms, if the file/folder/app is
moved the link is not necessarily broken - although we all know that it is
still possible to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_(Mac_OS)