[OS X TeX] OS X TeX newbie needs help installing TeX on non-boot volume

[Anthony Morton]

> A hard link does not consume disk space (it's just some bytes in the 
> already reserved space of the inode table). A sym-link takes at least 
> one disk block, plus the inode entry. The hard link and it's 'origin' 
> cannot be distinguished -- they're one file (with two eMail 
> addresses). A sym-link and its target are two different files -- or 
> one too: the sym-link pointing to a non-existent file.

Actually, it depends on the underlying file system.  On a traditional 
Unix File System (UFS) this is all true.  But HFS+ (the default under 
OS X) doesn't have inodes, so there's a tricky workaround at the kernel 
level to make hard links work and to mock-up the inode numbers.  The 
result is that both hard links and symbolic links take up disk space on 
HFS+, and hard links might actually take up slightly more.

Tony

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