UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

Is it possible to change the target of a symbolic link?

What I currently have is:
/home/Data1
/home/Data2
/home/Stores

In the Stores directory, I did: ln -s /home/Data1 /home/Stores/abc
$ pwd
/home/Stores
$ ls -latr
lrwxrwxrwx 1 dandy dandy 46 Feb 12 16:38 abc -> /home/Data1

I want to now change that target to:
abc -> /home/Data2

BUT, I don't want to do have to delete the link and re-create it to the new target. I just want to rename/change/modify the target. Is it possible?


Thanks

Yes it is possible

So how do you change the target of a symlink?

Very interested to hear fpmurphy's explanation on how to change target of symlink without deleting the symlink first.

I normally delete the symlink and re-create it on one line, minimizing the time the link does not exist:

rm mysymlink ; ln -s mytargetfile mysymlink

I suppose you could write a little hack which does it in one go, but I've never heard of one which is included in standard POSIX systems...

fpmurphy is absolutely correct...yes you can change the target of a soft link without deleting the old one by forcing ln to do so.

Code:

ln -s /home/Data1 /home/Stores/abc
ln -f -s /home/Data2 /home/Stores/abc

wow, thanx