On Sat, 2006-05-27 at 22:57 -0400, rblythe wrote: > ln -s -v ../../path/to/target somename or directory > > Specifically what I don't understand is the ../../ portion.
Well, do you understand the use of . and .. as directory names in *nix (and for that matter MSDOS) environments? The period by itself . is the current directory, and the double period .. is the parent directory. So if you're sitting at the console with the current directory (pwd) /foo/bar/baz/bat/ then .. would be /foo/bar/baz/ and ../.. would be /foo/bar/, right? You can use this to link a nearby directory tree. Say application 1 expects to find libraries in /foo/bar/lib1/app but application 2 expects to find those same libraries in /foo/bar/lib2/app. Rather than create two copies of an identical library, you might cd /foo/bar/lib2/app and write: ln -s -v ../../lib1/app/somelib.so This would create a symbolic link in /foo/bar/lib2/app called somelib.so that pointed back to /foo/bar/lib1/app/somelib.so . By using the grandparent (../../) folder name, you maintain relative positions even if the whole /foo path changes to /fue - /fue/bar/lib2/app/somelib.so would still successfully point back two directories then down into lib1/app regardless of the top level directory name change. Probably way more detail than you wanted, but that's the whole story :-) -- Peter B. Steiger, glad I finally knew the answer to a question Cheyenne, WY -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
