What is the difference between soft and hard references?

Hard links and soft links (or symbolic links) are two ways to create links to files in a filesystem.

• Hard link is an additional name for an existing file. It points directly to the file's inode. If the original name is deleted, the file remains accessible through the hard link. Hard links cannot be created for directories or across different filesystems.

• Soft link (symbolic link) is a separate file that contains the path to another file or directory. If the original file is deleted, the soft link becomes broken and does not work. Soft links can be created for directories and across different filesystems.

Example of creating soft and hard links in Linux:

ln original.txt hardlink.txt      # hard link
ln -s original.txt softlink.txt   # soft (symbolic) link