NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

LN(1)                           User Commands                          LN(1)

NAME         top

       ln - make links between files

SYNOPSIS         top

       ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME   (1st form)
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET                  (2nd form)
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY     (3rd form)
       ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...  (4th form)

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.
       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options
       too.
       --backup[=CONTROL]
              make a backup of each existing destination file
       -b     like --backup but does not accept an argument
       -d, -F, --directory
              allow the superuser to attempt to hard link directories (note:
              will probably fail due to system restrictions, even for the
              superuser)
       -f, --force
              remove existing destination files
       -i, --interactive
              prompt whether to remove destinations
       -L, --logical
              dereference TARGETs that are symbolic links
       -n, --no-dereference
              treat LINK_NAME as a normal file if it is a symbolic link to a
              directory
       -P, --physical
              make hard links directly to symbolic links
       -r, --relative
              create symbolic links relative to link location
       -s, --symbolic
              make symbolic links instead of hard links
       -S, --suffix=SUFFIX
              override the usual backup suffix
       -t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY
              specify the DIRECTORY in which to create the links
       -T, --no-target-directory
              treat LINK_NAME as a normal file always
       -v, --verbose
              print name of each linked file
       --help display this help and exit
       --version
              output version information and exit
       The backup suffix is '~', unless set with --suffix or
       SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX.  The version control method may be selected via
       the --backup option or through the VERSION_CONTROL environment
       variable.  Here are the values:
       none, off
              never make backups (even if --backup is given)
       numbered, t
              make numbered backups
       existing, nil
              numbered if numbered backups exist, simple otherwise
       simple, never
              always make simple backups
       Using -s ignores -L and -P.  Otherwise, the last option specified
       controls behavior when a TARGET is a symbolic link, defaulting to -P.

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Mike Parker and David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report ln translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+: GNU
       GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       link(2), symlink(2)
       Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ln>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) ln invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project can
       be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, see 
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained from
       the tarball coreutils-8.27.tar.xz fetched from 
       ⟨http://www.gnutls.org/download.html⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
       you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
GNU coreutils 8.27               March 2017                            LN(1)

Pages that refer to this page: update-alternatives(1)link(2)symlink(2)hier(7)symlink(7)sln(8)