Editing Alias (Mac OS) (section)

==Relation to BSD symbolic and hard links==

[[Unix]] and similar operating systems provide 2 features very similar to macOS aliases: [[symbolic links]] and [[hard links]]. 
When using the macOS Finder, links are displayed and treated largely like macOS aliases, and even carry an identical "Kind" attribute. 
However, when using the shell command line, macOS aliases are not recognized: for example, you cannot use the ''cd'' command with the name of an alias file. This is because an alias is implemented as a file on the disk that must be interpreted by an API while links are implemented within the filesystem and are thus functional at any level of the OS. 

There is currently no pre-installed command to resolve an alias to the path of the file or directory it refers to. However, a freely available C program makes use of the Mac [[Carbon_(Mac_OS_X)|Carbon]] APIs to perform this task.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Davis |first1=Thos |title=getTrueName.c |url=http://hints.macworld.com/dlfiles/getTrueName.txt |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141113103415/http://hints.macworld.com/dlfiles/getTrueName.txt |archive-date=2014-11-13 |access-date=24 October 2016 |website=Mac OS X Hints |publisher=IDG}}</ref> Given that, commands such as ''cd'' can be set up to check for aliases and treat them just like symbolic or hard links.