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".
Got something to add? Send me email.
Increase ad revenue 50-250% with Ezoic
Inexpensive and informative Apple related e-books:
Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal, Second Edition
Sierra: A Take Control Crash Course
Take Control of OS X Server
Photos: A Take Control Crash Course
iOS 8: A Take Control Crash Course
More Articles by Tony Lawrence
Find me on Google+
© 2009-11-06 Tony Lawrence
Printer Friendly Version
Symlinks Copyright © October 2005 Tony Lawrence
Have you tried Searching this site?
Support RatesThis is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more.
Contact us
Printer Friendly Version