Symbolic Link Creation and Deletion
The following shows the creation of a symbolic link slink.txt:
$ ln -s data.txt slink.txt $ ls -li 969768 -rw-r--r-- 1 alex alex 10 Dec 9 09:11 data.txt 969817 lrwxrwxrwx 1 alex alex 8 Dec 9 09:11 slink.txt -> data.txtThe symbolic (soft) link is stored in a different inode than the text file (969817). The information stored in data.txt is accessible through the slink.txt:
$ file slink.txt slink.txt: symbolic link to `data.txt' $ cat slink.txt some dataIf we delete the text file data.txt, slink.txt becomes a broken link and our data is lost.
$ rm data.txt $ ls -li 969817 lrwxrwxrwx 1 alex alex 8 Dec 9 09:11 slink.txt -> data.txt $ file slink.txt slink.txt: broken symbolic link to `data.txt' $ cat slink.txt cat: slink.txt: No such file or directoryFamous quotes containing the words symbolic, link and/or creation:
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