am regularly amazed that we pretend folders are the right way to organise files. They’re entirely arbitrary. Every competent file system ignores them to its best ability. Why can’t I have a file in two folders? Why does one have to be a “reference”? Why can’t I filter for files that exist in 3 folders with X extension?
We’ve been played for absolute fools.
That’s not an unreasonable answer. But I find this thread a little frustrating. As I see it, it’s gone like this:
Why bring up hard links if people shouldn’t use them for the requested use case? I mean, I do think your original reply was interesting and relevant as a starting point to get to what I think OP has in mind. But that line of thinking does require getting into how to use hard links for a non-hierarchical workflow.
I feel like OP was trying to start a discussion about what might be, if things were different. I tried to reply in the same spirit. I feel like I’m asking, “What if things were different?”, and I’m being told “It doesn’t work that way.” Which doesn’t feel like an especially helpful response to me.
I mean there are better tools, such as TMSU or tagfs, which i think are actually better approaches to having (part of) your file system displayed in a non-hierarchical way - or rather in a dynamic hierarchy.
But the other poster is also right in that for your system file system, i.e. root and operating-system critical paths, do not benefit from such an approach. I think asking for such a thing kind of sounds like an XY problem and requires listing the actual problems to solve with an alternative approach first.