finding links to a file

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I am writing a shell script that needs to files that are links to on specific shell script.

e.g.

/usr/bin/a.sh

/home/mydir/a.sh --> /usr/bin/a.sh
/home/yourdir/a.sh --> /usr/bin/a.sh
/home/hisdir/a.sh --> /usr/bin/a.sh
/home/herdir/a.sh --> /usr/bin/a.sh

I know I can set myself at the /home and "find" the links, but my question is more to the guru types. Is there a simple command that I can use on /usr/bin/a.sh to get the list of all the files that have links to it?
It might give output like:

# lnk2file /usr/bin/a.sh
/home/mydir/a.sh
/home/yourdir/a.sh
/home/hisdir/a.sh
/home/herdir/a.sh
#

Just want to know if there is a better way to skin this cat.

TIA

hagar

2

If you think about how links are implemented, I would say the generic answer is no. Hard links are just directory entries in different places which link to the same inode number; there is no link in the other direction. Similarly, symbolic links are typically just a text snippet which says where to link to, and a special flag in the directory entry tells the kernel to read the file and redirect to the file pointed to by the text snippet. Again, there is no link in the other direction.

3

Thank you for the new knowledge you have given me re: how links actually work.

hagar