Computer

I have recently taken up the challenge of solving Sudoku puzzles. Not that I intend to spend any of my precious free time sweating over a 9 by 9 grid, pencilling in (and subsequently erasing) numbers to complete the pattern. Oh no, not I. I find it much more challenging to write a program that will solve Sudoku puzzles for me.

Applications are collections of executable files, shared-object files (DLLs in Windows-speak) and data files. In Windows, the file name is the indication; if the filename ends with one of a number of character patterns (.COM, .EXE, .DLL, .SCR, etc.), the Windows kernel will load and execute the file.

I have had need, on occasion, to determine the IP address assigned to my PPP connection by my ISP, but have been reluctant to code the usually complex scripts nececssary to extract this information from the results of the 'ifconfig' command.

Q: Can someone give me a simple explanation of the difference between a soft link and a hard link? The documentation I've read mention these links but make no strong explanations of their meaning and how/when to use them. Thanks!

A: OK, I'll give it a try...

The Basics

Unix files consist of two parts: the data part and the filename part.

A quick bit of code to find the number of digits in N!