Symlinks

By Tony Lawrence
2005-10-19


Symlinks

Linux "symlinks" is a handy utility for managing symbolic links. It can clean up the sort of problems that come from carelesness when creating symbolic links. For purposes of illustration, I created some legal but structurally incorrect symbolic links. With the exeption of the "dangling" sl3 (a dangling symlink points somewhere that does not exist), these all work, but they have problems, and "symlinks -v" will show us:

$ symlinks -v -s .

messy:    /home/tony/varwwwmess -> /var//www

dangling: /home/tony/sl2 -> ../incoming

lengthy:  /home/tony/sl3 -> ../tony/incoming

other_fs: /home/tony/varwww -> /var/www

absolute: /home/tony/vhosts -> /home/httpd/vhosts/

relative: /home/tony/webby -> vhosts/webby.com

That's helpful. Even more helpful is that symlinks can clean this stuff up in a flash:

$ symlinks -c -s .

messy:    /home/tony/varwwwmess -> /var//www

changed:  /home/tony/varwwwmess -> /var/www

dangling: /home/tony/sl2 -> ../incoming

lengthy:  /home/tony/sl3 -> ../tony/incoming

changed:  /home/tony/sl3 -> incoming

other_fs: /home/tony/varwww -> /var/www

absolute: /home/tony/vhosts -> /home/httpd/vhosts/

changed:  /home/tony/vhosts -> ../httpd/vhosts

$ symlinks -v -s .

other_fs: /home/tony/varwwwmess -> /var/www

relative: /home/tony/sl3 -> incoming

dangling: /home/tony/sl2 -> ../incoming

other_fs: /home/tony/varwww -> /var/www

relative: /home/tony/vhosts -> ../httpd/vhosts

relative: /home/tony/webby -> vhosts/webby.com

The -c fixes all problems, but does leave the dangling link. To remove it:

$ symlinks -d .

other_fs: /home/tony/varwwwmess -> /var/www

dangling: /home/tony/sl2 -> ../incoming

deleted:  /home/tony/sl2 -> ../incoming

other_fs: /home/tony/varwww -> /var/www

"symlinks" can operate recursively with "-r" and can show you its actions with "-t".

Tutorial Pages:
» Symlinks


© Copyright 2005 A.P. Lawrence

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