SQL hints: absolute override?

We are running on Oracle 7.1, using rule-based optimizer. Some hints have been used in SQL-statements.

We have 7.3 test environments also, and when digging into optimizer issues I have found out following:

HINT effectively forces the optimizers hand, and it makes no difference what you have in INIT.ORA or table statistics, hint will be followed.

RTFM didn't help, and few explained plans make me think so.

Am I right?

What happens if the hinted index is not there, or is modified?

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