UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Does anybody know how to make symbolic links for multiple files simultaneously?
Often times I need make symbolic links for multiple files with some common pattern (just like "*.jpg"). Is there a way to avoid making symbolic link for each of them one by one...
Thank you!

please give more clue about the Source and target directory as well as the filenames

Let's say you have a /target directory containing

Code:

pic1.jpg
pic2.jpg
pic3.jpg
pic4.jpg
...

and you want to create some links in /linksource

Code:

lnkpic1 pointing to pic1.jpg
lnkpic2 pointing to pic2.jpg
lnkpic3 pointing to pic3.jpg
lnkpic4 pointing to pic4.jpg
...

to create those lnkpic* link you can for example :
just

Code:

cd /linksource
for i in /target/pic*.jpg
do
t=${i##*/}
ln -s "$i" lnk"${t%.*}"
done

If what you want is something else for example, you want /linksource to be a link to /target so that if someone do cd /linksource, he goes to /target and can see the pic*.jpg,
then

Code:

ln -s /target /linksource

e.g.
I have 50 files in the directory jpg1

file1.jpg
file2.jpg
..
file50.jpg

I want to make symbolic links for all them to my current directory /jpg2

I tried in directory jpg2

$ln -s ~/jpg1/*.jpg *.jpg

Are you sure you don't prefer your jpg2 be a link to jpg1 ? if so :

Code:

ln -s /jpg1 /jpg2

Else, if you want a link for each an every file... then :

Code:

cd /jpg2
for i in /jpg1/*.jpg
do
ln -s "$i" "${i##*/}"
done

This doesn't seem to be working for me.
I get the message that ln: target `pic1.jpg' is not a directory
Any clues?

What is your OS ?
check the syntax of ln command

Code:

man ln

if on solaris try using /usr/xpg4/bin/ln

the trick here is to go into the target directory before issuing the ls command:

cd /jpeg2
ln -s /jpeg1/* -t .