How can we find all hard links to a given file?
I.e., find all other hard links to the same file, given a hard link?
Does filesystem keep track of the hard links to a file?
The inode of a file only stores the number of hard links to the file, but not the hard links, right?
Answers:
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Method 1
If the given file is called /path/to/file and you want to find all hard links to it that exist under the current directory, then use:
find . -samefile /path/to/file
The above was tested on GNU find. Although -samefile is not POSIX, it is also supported by Mac OSX find and FreeBSD find.
Documentation
From GNU man find:
-samefile name
File refers to the same inode as name. When -L is in effect, this can include symbolic links.
Differences between find and ls
ls -l lists the number of hard links to a file or directory. For directories, this number is larger than the number of results shown by find . -samefile. The reason for this is explained in the GNU find manual:
A directory normally has at least two hard links: the entry named in
its parent directory, and the.entry inside of the directory. If a
directory has subdirectories, each of those also has a hard link
called..to its parent directory.The
.and..directory entries are not normally searched unless they
are mentioned on the find command line.
In sum, ls -l counts the . and .. directories as separate hard links but find . -samefile does not.
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