What happens with multiple groups selected when hardlinking?

[dsrtusr88]

I recently discovered I have my hardlinking misconfigured resulting in tons of dupes. In czkawka, if I have multiple groups selected and then hit hardlink, what would happen? each group collapses into their own single hardlink or every file selected will hardlink (and ruin my library?)

[qarmin]

Each group is processed in isolation.

In each group, first selected item is treated as "original" and rest as duplicates(but this rarely matters in harlinking)

[dsrtusr88]

@qarmin

so in the case:

Group 1

• item A
• item B

Group 2

• item C
• item D

If I have all of those selected at the same time and click hardlink, the result will be item A & item B hardlinked with the original dataset of item A persisting with the dataset of item B is removed.... and the same happens with item C and item D with two distinct datasets (A and C) remaining hardlinked to their respective files?

[qarmin]

B will be replaced with hardlink to A
D will be replaced with hardlink to C

Nothing else should happen