Soft File links in Linux

Soft File links in Linux

A symbolic or “soft” link points to a file by name. When the kernel comes upon a symbolic link in the course of looking up a pathname, it redirects its attention to the pathname stored as the contents of the link. The difference between hard links and symbolic links is that a hard link is a direct reference, whereas a symbolic link is a reference by name. Symbolic links are distinct from the files they point to.

Symbolic links operate transparently for most operations: programs that read or write to files named by a symbolic link will behave as if operating directly on the target file. However, programs that need to handle symbolic links specially (e.g., backup utilities) may identify and manipulate them directly.

To create a symbolic link in Unix or Linux, at the shell prompt, enter the following command:

ln -s {target-filename} {symbolic-filename}

So let us make a simple example of a index.php file in the web server directory.

The file /home/guru/index.php could then be moved elsewhere without causing the symbolic link to stop working (not that moving this directory is advisable).

It is a common mistake to think that the first argument to ln -s is interpreted relative to your current working directory. However, it is not resolved as a filename by ln; it’s simply a literal string that becomes the target of the symbolic link.

After creating the symbolic link, it may generally be treated as an alias for the target. Any file system management commands (e.g., cp, rm) may be used on the symbolic link. Commands which read or write file contents will access the contents of the target file. The rm (delete file) command, however, removes the link itself, not the target file.