I am using bash shell in Ubuntu precise.
I am partial to symbolic links in bash even when a hard link would make more sense because they can be more easily identified with an ls. In contrast, for hard links I have to visually compare the inode numbers. This is more cumbersome compared to the output of ls on a soft link which shows the target with "-->" and can have a different colouring scheme applied. Is there a way to have ls visually differentiate hard links from "normal files"? E.g. perhaps by colouring differently files with a reference count of more than 1?
I understand that the question is not framed correctly as conceptually a hard link is just another name for the inode and so indistinguishable from a "normal file" and that there is no concept of a target as in symbolic links but you get my use case.