redhat man page for link

LINK(2) 						     Linux Programmer's Manual							   LINK(2)

NAME
       link - make a new name for a file

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int link(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);

DESCRIPTION
       link creates a new link (also known as a hard link) to an existing file.

       If newpath exists it will not be overwritten.

       This new name may be used exactly as the old one for any operation; both names refer to the same file (and so have the same permissions and
       ownership) and it is impossible to tell which name was the `original'.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EXDEV  oldpath and newpath are not on the same filesystem.

       EPERM  The filesystem containing oldpath and newpath does not support the creation of hard links.

       EFAULT oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.

       EACCES Write access to the directory containing newpath is not allowed for the process's effective uid, or one of the directories  in  old-
	      path or newpath did not allow search (execute) permission.

       ENAMETOOLONG
	      oldpath or newpath was too long.

       ENOENT A directory component in oldpath or newpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.

       ENOTDIR
	      A component used as a directory in oldpath or newpath is not, in fact, a directory.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       EROFS  The file is on a read-only filesystem.

       EEXIST newpath already exists.

       EMLINK The file referred to by oldpath already has the maximum number of links to it.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving oldpath or newpath.

       ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry.

       EPERM  oldpath is a directory.

       EIO    An I/O error occurred.

NOTES
       Hard links, as created by link, cannot span filesystems. Use symlink if this is required.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4,  SVID,  POSIX,  BSD  4.3, X/OPEN.	SVr4 documents additional ENOLINK and EMULTIHOP error conditions; POSIX.1 does not document ELOOP.
       X/OPEN does not document EFAULT, ENOMEM or EIO.

BUGS
       On NFS file systems, the return code may be wrong in case the NFS server performs the link creation and dies before it  can  say  so.   Use
       stat(2) to find out if the link got created.

SEE ALSO
       symlink(2), unlink(2), rename(2), open(2), stat(2), ln(1)

Linux 2.0.30							    1997-12-10								   LINK(2)