redhat man page for symlink

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);

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 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
       EPERM  The filesystem containing newpath does not support the creation of symbolic 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 new-
	      path did not allow search (execute) permission.

       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.

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

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       EROFS  newpath is on a read-only filesystem.

       EEXIST newpath already exists.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving newpath.

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

       EIO    An I/O error occurred.

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	behaviour  is  not
       desired, use link.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4,  SVID,  POSIX,  BSD  4.3.	 SVr4 documents additional error codes SVr4, SVID, BSD 4.3, X/OPEN.  SVr4 documents additional error codes
       EDQUOT and ENOSYS.  See open(2) re multiple files with the same name, and NFS.

SEE ALSO
       readlink(2), link(2), unlink(2), rename(2), open(2), lstat(2), ln(1)

Linux 2.0.30							    1997-08-21								SYMLINK(2)