links
People say links to mean connections between things. On the web, it means the blue underlined words you click to go somewhere else. It can also mean the pieces of a chain, or the connections between people.
What a model may hear
- symbolic references operating systems and file systems
- treat the request as being about hard links or symbolic links (symlinks), which are pointers to files
- hypertext references HTML and web development
- generate anchor tags, href attributes, or URL structures
- graph edges data structures and network theory
- model relationships as edges in a graph with nodes and connections
- library linking compiled software and build systems
- assume static or dynamic linking of code libraries
Where people and models part ways
“Send me the links”
Meant: Share some web URLs with me
May be taken as: Generate file system symlinks or symbolic link commands
Say instead: “Send me some web URLs I can click”
“Fix the broken links”
Meant: Some website URLs do not work anymore
May be taken as: Attempt to repair file system symbolic links or debug library linking errors
Say instead: “Fix the broken URLs on my website”
“Show me how they link together”
Meant: Explain how these ideas connect
May be taken as: Draw a graph data structure or write code for linked nodes
Say instead: “Explain how these ideas connect conceptually”
“Add links to the document”
Meant: Put in clickable references to web pages
May be taken as: Insert HTML anchor tags with empty or guessed href values, or create file system links
Say instead: “Add clickable web URLs to the document”
Tips
- Say web links or URLs when you mean the internet kind
- Say file shortcuts or symlinks when you mean the operating system kind
- Say connections or relationships when you mean abstract ideas
- Specify HTML links or markdown links if you want a particular format
- Say chain links or golf links if you mean those literal things
Often confused with
- ln
- the Unix command that makes symbolic links, not the plural noun
- link
- singular form, same meanings but may trigger different code patterns
- URL
- the actual address text, not the clickable element or relationship
- href
- the HTML attribute that holds a link destination, not the whole concept
- node
- the endpoint in a network, not the connection between endpoints
- edge
- the technical term for a connection in graph theory, more abstract than links