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A Symbolic Link is not the same as Hard Link. A Hard Linked file has two file names and editing either name updates the same data.
A Symbolic Link is a separate file that contains no data, only a pointer to the other file.
If a Symbolic Link file is opened for reading, the $REPARSE_POINT attribute is processed and the file system will open a different file specified there.
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link
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