Difference between hard and soft link

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Hard links and soft links are two types of links used in file systems.

A hard link is a direct reference to a file on the disk, while a soft link is a pointer to the file's location.
Hard links have the same inode number as the original file, while soft links have a different inode number.
Deleting the original file does not affect hard links, but it breaks soft links.
Hard links can only be created within the same file system, while soft links can point to files on different file systems.
Hard links can't link directories, while soft links can.
Example: 'ln file1 file2' creates a hard link 'file2' pointing to 'file1', while 'ln -s file1 file2' creates a soft link 'file2' pointing to 'file1'.

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