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09-26-2011

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ln -s accept wildcards?

Does ln -s accept wildcards? It doesn't seem like it is working when I use wildcards.

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It does work, but you need to be somewhere else (not in the directory you use it from, since on its own their's no chance to give the link another name):

Code:

$ touch a b c
$ mkdir d && cd d
$ ln -s ../*
$ ll
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    2 scott     wheel            256 Sep 26 11:52 .
drwxr-xr-x    3 scott     wheel            256 Sep 26 11:52 ..
lrwxrwxrwx    1 scott     wheel              4 Sep 26 11:52 a -> ../a
lrwxrwxrwx    1 scott     wheel              4 Sep 26 11:52 b -> ../b
lrwxrwxrwx    1 scott     wheel              4 Sep 26 11:52 c -> ../c

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Wildcards don't work inside the link. You can't create one link that will match several files.

The best you can do create multiple links like scottn demonstrates.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Corona688

Wildcards don't work inside the link. You can't create one link that will match several files.

The best you can do create multiple links like scottn demonstrates.

This is what I tried. Is there a problem with this?

Code:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Downloading Java"
yum -y install wget
wget http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/6u27-b07/jre-6u27-linux-i586-rpm.bin
echo "Making executable"
chmod a+x jre*
echo "Installing java"
./jre*
cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
echo "Making symlink so Firefox works"
ln -s /usr/java/jre*/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

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Quote:

Originally Posted by COKEDUDE

This is what I tried. Is there a problem with this?

There is one if /usr/java/jre* doesn't exactly resolves into one single directory when the command is executed.

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Code:

ln -s /usr/java/jre*/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

Follow the logic for this.

If this resolves to one dir, you get ln -s /usr/java/jrewhatever/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so. It complains that you didn't give it a second filename to link to.

If this resolves to more than one, you're telling it to overwrite your other libnpjp2.so's with symlinks to the first one. Fortunately it won't as a safety feature.

I think what you want is:

Code:

ln -s /usr/java/default/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so /wherever/I/want/it/to/go.so

And you might only need to run it once, since /usr/java/default/ should point to the right place in any case.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Corona688

If this resolves to one dir, you get ln -s /usr/java/jrewhatever/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so. It complains that you didn't give it a second filename to link to.

Actually not. "ln -s" destination is an optional argument and defaults to the current directory if unspecified.

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