What is the difference between a hard link and a symbolic link?

The main difference on first-hand is that hard links link two files so when we make changes either in the original file or in the hard link file both are changed. To clarify, when we remove any of these files the other one stays in.

On the other hand, soft links are an alternative path for the original file. In summary, a soft link represents an alias since it’s totally different from the original file and it does not use inode. When we remove the original file here, the soft link becomes invalid.

Note: The command used for a hard link is “ln” and the used one for a soft link is “ln -s”