How to find all the links to a directory

Question

When I stat a directory I get a listing that tell me there are 5 links to the directory.

stat dir

My question is how do I get information (names and locations) to all these 5 links?

Answer 1

You just need ls (or find).

When you create a directory, its link count starts at 2:

• One for the directory itself
• One for the . link inside itself

The other thing that increases the directory's link count is its subdirectories: they all have a .. entry linking back to their parent, adding one to its link count.

You can't hardlink directories in Linux, so these are the only things that count towards the link count - two plus number of subdirectories.