12-07-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jim mcnamara
Links have consequences. One of them is that you do not ever want dangling links - links "aimed" at non-existent. It is possible to create a series: link -> link -> physical file. This is where it is easy to get in trouble. You can create circular links in some circumstances.
By design, you cannot have dangling links when dealing with hard-links. They can only exist in the context of symlinks.
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SYMLINK(2) Linux Programmer's Manual SYMLINK(2)
NAME
symlink - make a new name for a file
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int symlink(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
symlink(): _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L
DESCRIPTION
symlink() creates a symbolic link named newpath which contains the string oldpath.
Symbolic links are interpreted at run time as if the contents of the link had been substituted into the path being followed to find a file
or directory.
Symbolic links may contain .. path components, which (if used at the start of the link) refer to the parent directories of that in which
the link resides.
A symbolic link (also known as a soft link) may point to an existing file or to a nonexistent one; the latter case is known as a dangling
link.
The permissions of a symbolic link are irrelevant; the ownership is ignored when following the link, but is checked when removal or renam-
ing of the link is requested and the link is in a directory with the sticky bit (S_ISVTX) set.
If newpath exists it will not be overwritten.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.
ERRORS
EACCES Write access to the directory containing newpath is denied, or one of the directories in the path prefix of newpath did not allow
search permission. (See also path_resolution(7).)
EEXIST newpath already exists.
EFAULT oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.
EIO An I/O error occurred.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving newpath.
ENAMETOOLONG
oldpath or newpath was too long.
ENOENT A directory component in newpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or oldpath is the empty string.
ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.
ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry.
ENOTDIR
A component used as a directory in newpath is not, in fact, a directory.
EPERM The file system containing newpath does not support the creation of symbolic links.
EROFS newpath is on a read-only file system.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
NOTES
No checking of oldpath is done.
Deleting the name referred to by a symlink will actually delete the file (unless it also has other hard links). If this behavior is not
desired, use link(2).
SEE ALSO
ln(1), lchown(2), link(2), lstat(2), open(2), readlink(2), rename(2), symlinkat(2), unlink(2), path_resolution(7), symlink(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.25 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2007-07-26 SYMLINK(2)