It is a symlink, but bash will automatically enable posix compliance mode if you use it. So any bash specific features will bomb out unless you explicitly reset it in the script.

Is there a similar way to handle linking to specific posts? I think all post urls are unique to that specific instance and I haven’t seen any way to do a translation between instances.

Even with RES, I remember seeing a few years ago that Reddit does some form of obfuscation with karma. So no one really knows the true number of downvotes and upvotes.