Symbolic links have played vital roles in many of linux development that I have been involved in. Hence, I thought it would do justice to write something on them.
Symbolic links are of 2 types - soft vs hard links.
· Soft links are pointers to programs, files, or directories located elsewhere (just like Windows shortcuts)
· Soft links don’t die if the source is deleted
· Hard links are pointers to programs and files, but NOT directories
· Hard links don’t die if the source is deleted
Let’s look at some commands to play with symbolic links.
Creating a symbolic link:
[yassar@machine data01]$ ln -s pointingToFolder linkName
This will create the linkName pointing to the folder
Displaying symbolic link(s):
[yassar@machine data01]$ ls -la
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 yassar yassar 35 Apr 2 21:35 workspace -> /data/workspaces/branches/Trunk_V3.0.1
This would display the folder details together with the actual link path
Updating a symbolic link:
[yassar@machine data01]$ ln -s pointingToDifferentFolder existingLinkName
This will use an existing link to point to a new folder
Deleting a symbolic link:
[yassar@machine data01]$ rm latest previous
This simply deletes the link.
Once you’re in the link directory, you may check the actual path:
[yassar@machine data01]$ pwd -P
