I think they're broken. On #Windows anyway. As far as my logic understands, any running program should not know that they even exist. But #xampp can tell. Or at least, I think Windows is just feeding it directories as if it could tell. This is a little rough to explain.

Say we have a #PHP file on an #Apache server in a directory, but that directory is actually what Windows calls a junction (A type of symbolic link). If I 'require' another php file with a relative link like '../', where is the server going to look?

My first guess? The directory above the junction. It took me nearly an hour to determine that it was looking in the directory above the TARGET of the junction. Maybe that's the way that should work for some reason. But I do not know what that reason is. If Windows had any kind of proper sandboxing, it'd be a major security hole.

I do seem to be good at finding the #CornerCases.

Have you ever wished you could have multiple folders on your system that contain the same files? And update in both places automatically? No? Oh, well then don't bother reading the rest of this.

For the cool people, symbolic links allow an operating system to treat files or folders as if they exist in multiple places. This is very useful for organization. In my case, I use them a lot for #WebDevelopment on my local server. I want to place all related project files in one place, but I need the actual web site to sit in the folder of the local server. Thanks to symbolic links, I can have both without manually updating the local site.

This works on a lot of operating systems, but for info on using them on #Windows, check out this HowToGeek article. I mostly use junctions to create folder links for entire websites, but the standard link type is also useful for single files. Just be careful, because a single file symbolic link looks EXACTLY the same as a shortcut in windows #explorer. But they are very different, as you can see if you check the properties. Also, the /H hard link seems to only make a copy, without auto updating the contents, so I don't ever use that.

You're welcome.

#tips #productivity