A thought on symbolic links ( was utime(2) )

[Jim Rees]

    A possibility would
    be to set a bit in the inode to indicate the linked-to filename is
    short (< 40 bytes?) & the data is contained the block pointer area of
    the inode.

On the Apollo system, we store the link text in the directory itself,
saving even the cost of allocating an inode.  This also means the link text
can be as long as you want, not limited by the size of the block pointers.

We also have 4.2 style symbolic links for anyone who wants to use them,
but given the vacuous semantics of ownership and mode, few people choose to.