ln

ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME
ln [OPTION]... TARGET
ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY
ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...

Make links between files.

Options

--backup=<CONTROL>

make a backup of each existing destination file

-b

like –backup but does not accept an argument

--force, -f

remove existing destination files

--interactive, -i

prompt whether to remove existing destination files

--no-dereference, -n

treat LINK_NAME as a normal file if it is a
symbolic link to a directory

--logical, -L

follow TARGETs that are symbolic links

--physical, -P

make hard links directly to symbolic links

--symbolic, -s

make symbolic links instead of hard links

--suffix=<SUFFIX>, -S <SUFFIX>

override the usual backup suffix

--target-directory=<DIRECTORY>, -t <DIRECTORY>

specify the DIRECTORY in which to create the links

--no-target-directory, -T

treat LINK_NAME as a normal file always

--relative, -r

create symbolic links relative to link location

--verbose, -v

print name of each linked file

In the 1st form, create a link to TARGET with the name LINK_NAME. In the 2nd form, create a link to TARGET in the current directory. In the 3rd and 4th forms, create links to each TARGET in DIRECTORY. Create hard links by default, symbolic links with –symbolic. By default, each destination (name of new link) should not already exist. When creating hard links, each TARGET must exist. Symbolic links can hold arbitrary text; if later resolved, a relative link is interpreted in relation to its parent directory.

Examples

Create a symbolic link to a file or directory:

ln {{[-s|--symbolic]}} /{{path/to/file_or_directory}} {{path/to/symlink}}

Create a symbolic link relative to where the link is located:

ln {{[-s|--symbolic]}} {{path/to/file_or_directory}} {{path/to/symlink}}

Overwrite an existing symbolic link to point to a different file:

ln {{[-sf|--symbolic --force]}} /{{path/to/new_file}} {{path/to/symlink}}

Create a hard link to a file:

ln /{{path/to/file}} {{path/to/hardlink}}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.