Describe hard and symbolic links. What is the difference between them?

What will be an ideal response?

Hard linked files are direct copies of one another, as they share the same inode and inode number. All hard linked files have the same size, and when one file is modified, the other hard linked files are updated as well. You can hard-link a file an unlimited number of times; however, the hard linked files must reside on the same filesystem. Although hard links share the same inode, deleting a hard linked file does not delete all the other hard linked files.Symbolic links are different than hard links because they do not share the same inode and inode number with their target file; one is merely a pointer to the other and, thus, both files have different sizes. The data blocks in a symbolically linked file contain only the pathname to the target file. When a user edits a symbolically linked file, he is actually editing the target file. Thus, if the target file is deleted, the symbolic link serves no function, as it points to a nonexistent file.