Symlinks
What Is It
Without the --symbolic option, ln will create a "hard link"[2], which points directly to the block in memory where the data resides. A symlink, or "symbolic link" or "soft link", will point to the file, which is in itself a pointer to the block in memory. This ensures things that the file itself maintains one single source of truth.
How To
To create a symlink, use ln -s. This will create a "shortcut" to the source file, allowing you to perform normal operations on the file using the symlink as you would if you typed out the full path to the source.
$ ls
$ # folder contains nothing
$ ln -s /path/to/file
$ ls
$ # folder contains "file", which is a symlink
$ ln -s /path/to/file shortcut-name
$ ls
$ # folder contains "file" and "shortcut-name", which are symlinks
References
Incoming Links
Last modified: 202401040446