ln(1B)						     SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands						    ln(1B)

NAME

       ln - make hard or symbolic links to files

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/ucb/ln [-fs] filename [linkname]

       /usr/ucb/ln [-fs] pathname... directory

DESCRIPTION

       The  /usr/ucb/ln  utility creates an additional directory entry, called a link, to a file or directory. Any number of links can be assigned
       to a file.  The number of links does not affect other file attributes such as size, protections, data, etc.

       filename is the name of the original file or directory. linkname is the new name to associate with the file or filename.   If  linkname	is
       omitted, the last component of filename is used as the name of the link.

       If the last argument is the name of a directory, symbolic links are made in that directory for each pathname argument; /usr/ucb/ln uses the
       last component of each pathname as the name of each link in the named directory.

       A hard link (the default) is a standard directory entry just like the one made when the file was created.  Hard links can only be  made	to
       existing  files.   Hard links cannot be made across file systems (disk partitions, mounted file systems).  To remove a file, all hard links
       to it must be removed, including the name by which it was first created; removing the last hard link releases the inode associated with the
       file.

       A symbolic link, made with the -s option, is a special directory entry that points to another named file. Symbolic links can span file sys-
       tems and point to directories.  In fact, you can create a symbolic link that points to a file that is currently absent from the	file  sys-
       tem; removing the file that it points to does not affect or alter the symbolic link itself.

       A  symbolic  link  to  a  directory behaves differently than you might expect in certain cases.	While an ls(1) on such a link displays the
       files in the pointed-to directory, an `ls -l' displays information about the link itself:

	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s dir link
	 example% ls link
	 file1 file2 file3 file4
	 example% ls -l link
	 lrwxrwxrwx  1 user	       7 Jan 11 23:27 link -> dir

       When you use cd(1) to change to a directory through a symbolic link, you wind up in the pointed-to location within the file  system.   This
       means  that the parent of the new working directory is not the parent of the symbolic link, but rather, the parent of the pointed-to direc-
       tory.  For instance, in the following case the final working directory is /usr and not /home/user/linktest.

	 example% pwd
	 /home/user/linktest
	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s /var/tmp symlink
	 example% cd symlink
	 example% cd ..
	 example% pwd
	 /usr

       C shell user's can avoid any resulting navigation problems by using the pushd and popd built-in commands instead of cd.

OPTIONS

       -f    Force a hard link to a directory. This option is only available to the super-user, and should be used with extreme caution.

       -s    Create a symbolic link or links.

USAGE

       See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of ln when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).

EXAMPLES

       Example 1 The /usr/ucb/ln command

       The commands below illustrate the effects of the different forms of the /usr/ucb/ln command:

	 example% /usr/ucb/ln file link
	 example% ls -F file link
	 file	link
	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s file symlink
	 example% ls -F file symlink
	 file	symlink@
	 example% ls -li file link symlink
	  10606 -rw-r--r--  2 user	      0 Jan 12 00:06 file
	  10606 -rw-r--r--  2 user	      0 Jan 12 00:06 link
	  10607 lrwxrwxrwx  1 user	      4 Jan 12 00:06 symlink -> file
	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s nonesuch devoid
	 example% ls -F devoid
	 devoid@
	 example% cat devoid
	 devoid: No such file or directory
	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s /proto/bin/* /tmp/bin
	 example% ls -F /proto/bin /tmp/bin
	 /proto/bin:
	 x*	 y*	 z*

	 /tmp/bin:
	 x@	 y@	 z@

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWscpu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       cp(1), ls(1), mv(1), rm(1), link(2), readlink(2), stat(2), symlink(2), attributes(5), largefile(5)

NOTES

       When the last argument is a directory, simple basenames should not be used for pathname arguments.  If a basename is  used,  the  resulting
       symbolic link points to itself:

	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s file /tmp
	 example% ls -l /tmp/file
	 lrwxrwxrwx  1 user	       4 Jan 12 00:16 /tmp/file -> file
	 example% cat /tmp/file
	 /tmp/file: Too many levels of symbolic links

       To avoid this problem, use full pathnames, or prepend a reference to the PWD variable to files in the working directory:

	 example% rm /tmp/file
	 example% /usr/ucb/ln -s $PWD/file /tmp
	 lrwxrwxrwx  1 user 4	    Jan 12 00:16 /tmp/file ->
	 /home/user/subdir/file

SunOS 5.11							    11 Mar 1994 							    ln(1B)