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On many websites, even on the Wikipedia article discussing links, I often see something like the following:

Soft links (symbolic links)...

Why two names?

Is there a difference (currently or historically)?

Please read the question carefully and note that this is not about the difference between hard links and symbolic links, but on the terminology of soft links vs symbolic links

Toby
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  • The documentation for `ln` only uses the terms hard link and symbolic link. – stark Mar 14 '22 at 17:21
  • @0stone0 no, that question is about hard links vs symbolic links. While an answer mentions soft links as an "AKA", there is no explanation of why soft links are "AKA" symbolic links. – Toby Mar 14 '22 at 17:49
  • @stark good point, is there then a reason for why so much other documentation uses the "soft" terminology then? This does not explain the use of "hard" as a differentiator, rather than saying "non-symbolic" or some other more directly relatable term – Toby Mar 14 '22 at 17:54
  • I feel like the name soft link is just for a dichotomy of hard vs soft link, but I have no references on the actual origin of the names – Leonardo Dagnino Mar 14 '22 at 18:33

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