ln(1B) SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands ln(1B)NAMEln - make hard or symbolic links to files
SYNOPSIS
/usr/ucb/ln [-fs] filename [linkname]
/usr/ucb/ln [-fs] pathname... directory
DESCRIPTION
The /usr/ucb/ln utility creates an additional directory entry, called a
link, to a file or directory. Any number of links can be assigned to a
file. The number of links does not affect other file attributes such
as size, protections, data, etc.
filename is the name of the original file or directory. linkname is the
new name to associate with the file or filename. If linkname is omit‐
ted, the last component of filename is used as the name of the link.
If the last argument is the name of a directory, symbolic links are
made in that directory for each pathname argument; /usr/ucb/ln uses the
last component of each pathname as the name of each link in the named
directory.
A hard link (the default) is a standard directory entry just like the
one made when the file was created. Hard links can only be made to
existing files. Hard links cannot be made across file systems (disk
partitions, mounted file systems). To remove a file, all hard links to
it must be removed, including the name by which it was first created;
removing the last hard link releases the inode associated with the
file.
A symbolic link, made with the -s option, is a special directory entry
that points to another named file. Symbolic links can span file systems
and point to directories. In fact, you can create a symbolic link that
points to a file that is currently absent from the file system; remov‐
ing the file that it points to does not affect or alter the symbolic
link itself.
A symbolic link to a directory behaves differently than you might
expect in certain cases. While an ls(1) on such a link displays the
files in the pointed-to directory, an `ls -l' displays information
about the link itself:
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s dir link
example% ls link
file1 file2 file3 file4
example% ls -l link
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user 7 Jan 11 23:27 link → dir
When you use cd(1) to change to a directory through a symbolic link,
you wind up in the pointed-to location within the file system. This
means that the parent of the new working directory is not the parent of
the symbolic link, but rather, the parent of the pointed-to directory.
For instance, in the following case the final working directory is /usr
and not /home/user/linktest.
example% pwd
/home/user/linktest
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s /var/tmp symlink
example% cd symlink
example% cd ..
example% pwd
/usr
C shell user's can avoid any resulting navigation problems by using the
pushd and popd built-in commands instead of cd.
OPTIONS-f Force a hard link to a directory. This option is only avail‐
able to the super-user, and should be used with extreme cau‐
tion.
-s Create a symbolic link or links.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of ln when encoun‐
tering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1: The /usr/ucb/ln command
The commands below illustrate the effects of the different forms of the
/usr/ucb/ln command:
example% /usr/ucb/ln file link
example% ls -F file link
file link
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s file symlink
example% ls -F file symlink
file symlink@
example% ls -li file link symlink
10606 -rw-r--r-- 2 user 0 Jan 12 00:06 file
10606 -rw-r--r-- 2 user 0 Jan 12 00:06 link
10607 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user 4 Jan 12 00:06 symlink → file
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s nonesuch devoid
example% ls -F devoid
devoid@
example% cat devoid
devoid: No such file or directory
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s /proto/bin/* /tmp/bin
example% ls -F /proto/bin /tmp/bin
/proto/bin:
x* y* z*
/tmp/bin:
x@ y@ z@
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWscpu │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOcp(1), ls(1), mv(1), rm(1), link(2), readlink(2), stat(2), symlink(2),
attributes(5), largefile(5)NOTES
When the last argument is a directory, simple basenames should not be
used for pathname arguments. If a basename is used, the resulting sym‐
bolic link points to itself:
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s file /tmp
example% ls -l /tmp/file
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user 4 Jan 12 00:16 /tmp/file → file
example% cat /tmp/file
/tmp/file: Too many levels of symbolic links
To avoid this problem, use full pathnames, or prepend a reference to
the PWD variable to files in the working directory:
example% rm /tmp/file
example% /usr/ucb/ln -s $PWD/file /tmp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user 4 Jan 12 00:16 /tmp/file →
/home/user/subdir/file
SunOS 5.10 11 Mar 1994 ln(1B)
