1 .\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source.
3 .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
4 .\" 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson.
6 .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
7 .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
8 .\" preserved on all copies.
10 .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
11 .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
12 .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
13 .\" permission notice identical to this one.
15 .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
16 .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
17 .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
18 .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
19 .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
20 .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
23 .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
24 .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
26 .\" Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith
27 .\" Modified 1996-04-26 by Nick Duffek <nsd@bbc.com>
28 .\" Modified 1996-11-06 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
29 .\" Modified 1997-01-31 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
30 .\" Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
32 .TH SYMLINK 2 2007-07-26 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
34 symlink \- make a new name for a file
36 .B #include <unistd.h>
38 .BI "int symlink(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath );
41 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
42 .BR feature_test_macros (7)):
47 _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 || _POSIX_C_SOURCE\ >=\ 200112L
51 creates a symbolic link named
53 which contains the string
56 Symbolic links are interpreted at run time as if the contents of the
57 link had been substituted into the path being followed to find a file or
60 Symbolic links may contain
62 path components, which (if used at the start of the link) refer to the
63 parent directories of that in which the link resides.
65 A symbolic link (also known as a soft link) may point to an existing
66 file or to a nonexistent one; the latter case is known as a dangling
69 The permissions of a symbolic link are irrelevant; the ownership is
70 ignored when following the link, but is checked when removal or
71 renaming of the link is requested and the link is in a directory with
82 On success, zero is returned.
83 On error, \-1 is returned, and
89 Write access to the directory containing
91 is denied, or one of the directories in the path prefix of
93 did not allow search permission.
95 .BR path_resolution (7).)
102 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space."
105 An I/O error occurred.
108 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
112 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long."
115 A directory component in
117 does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or
122 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
125 The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
129 A component used as a directory in
131 is not, in fact, a directory.
134 The file system containing
136 does not support the creation of symbolic links.
140 is on a read-only file system.
142 SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
143 .\" SVr4 documents additional error codes EDQUOT and ENOSYS.
146 .\" re multiple files with the same name, and NFS.
152 Deleting the name referred to by a symlink will actually delete the
153 file (unless it also has other hard links).
154 If this behavior is not desired, use
166 .BR path_resolution (7),