Re: [newbie] Creating symbolic links

[John Richard Smith]

Benjamin Pflugmann wrote:

Hi.

On Fri 2003-01-31 at 22:11:45 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[...]

It confused me for a long time.

ln -s <destination file> < source file > <enter>

Aehem. Wrong, except you have some weird understanding of source (or
maybe I have - I am not a native speaker ;). Or, well, it is probably
a matter of how one thinksabout it. If you think about the act of
linking the file resp. on what the command act upon, it's like "cp",

ln -s <source> <destination>

with <source> being the existing file or directory and <destination>
being the one (the link) you want to create.

Although the man page references <source> by the name "target" (of the
link), which doesn't make it much easier, and <destination> by "link
name".
If you do not think about the linking, but the end result, i.e. when
you actually use the link, source and destination used in your way
make more sense (then the link is the source which points to the
destination). But when referring to arguments of a command I prefer to
think about what it acts upon, not what it results in.

I also always had problems to remember the order until I noticed one
day, that - as with cp - the *existing* file comes first.

Regards,

Benjamin.


PS: IIRC, some Solaris version(s) have it the other way around, which
didn't make it easier for me to remember.

PPS: Note that in order to create a soft link, the "existing" file
does not need to exist in real, but usually it does, and it helps
anyhow, if you think about how you *would* copy that non-existing
file. ;)

Which is why the Man file for symbolic links is so confusing for the beginner.

John

--
John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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