Are there any differences between `/etc` and `/private/etc`?

Are there any differences between /etc and /private/etc on Mac OS X?

Solution 1:

On i386/darwin10.0/10.7.0:

%  ls -aFGl / | grep private
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  wheel        11 Apr 28  2010 etc@ -> private/etc
drwxr-xr-x@   6 root  wheel       204 Apr 28  2010 private/
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  wheel        11 Apr 28  2010 tmp@ -> private/tmp
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  wheel        11 Apr 28  2010 var@ -> private/var

%  ls -aFGl /private
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@  6 root  wheel   204 Apr 28  2010 ./
drwxrwxr-t  32 root  admin  1156 Jan 19 10:04 ../
drwxr-xr-x  95 root  wheel  3230 Apr  7 07:06 etc/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    68 Jan 27  2010 tftpboot/
drwxrwxrwt   9 root  wheel   306 Apr 15 09:03 tmp/
drwxr-xr-x  26 root  wheel   884 Apr 28  2010 var/

So /etc is a symlink. To /private/etc, which is a directory. They both have the same contents. The same is true for /tmp and /var.