.\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt; .\" and Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson. .\" and Copyright (C) 2006, 2014 Michael Kerrisk .\" .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM) .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are .\" preserved on all copies. .\" .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a .\" permission notice identical to this one. .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working .\" professionally. .\" .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. .\" %%%LICENSE_END .\" .\" Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith .\" Modified 1996-04-26 by Nick Duffek .\" Modified 1996-11-06 by Eric S. Raymond .\" Modified 1997-01-31 by Eric S. Raymond .\" Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk .\" .TH SYMLINK 2 2014-08-19 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME symlink, symlinkat \- make a new name for a file .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .B #include .sp .BI "int symlink(const char *" target ", const char *" linkpath ); .sp .BR "#include " "/* Definition of AT_* constants */" .B #include .sp .BI "int symlinkat(const char *" target ", int " newdirfd \ ", const char *" linkpath ); .sp .fi .in -4n Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see .BR feature_test_macros (7)): .in .sp .ad l .BR symlink (): .RS 4 _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ &&\ _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED || _POSIX_C_SOURCE\ >=\ 200112L .RE .sp .BR symlinkat (): .PD 0 .ad l .RS 4 .TP 4 Since glibc 2.10: _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 700 || _POSIX_C_SOURCE\ >=\ 200809L .TP Before glibc 2.10: _ATFILE_SOURCE .RE .ad b .PD .SH DESCRIPTION .BR symlink () creates a symbolic link named .I linkpath which contains the string .IR target . Symbolic links are interpreted at run time as if the contents of the link had been substituted into the path being followed to find a file or directory. Symbolic links may contain .I .. path components, which (if used at the start of the link) refer to the parent directories of that in which the link resides. A symbolic link (also known as a soft link) may point to an existing file or to a nonexistent one; the latter case is known as a dangling link. The permissions of a symbolic link are irrelevant; the ownership is ignored when following the link, but is checked when removal or renaming of the link is requested and the link is in a directory with the sticky bit .RB ( S_ISVTX ) set. If .I linkpath exists, it will .I not be overwritten. .SS symlinkat() The .BR symlinkat () system call operates in exactly the same way as .BR symlink (), except for the differences described here. If the pathname given in .I linkpath is relative, then it is interpreted relative to the directory referred to by the file descriptor .I newdirfd (rather than relative to the current working directory of the calling process, as is done by .BR symlink () for a relative pathname). If .I linkpath is relative and .I newdirfd is the special value .BR AT_FDCWD , then .I linkpath is interpreted relative to the current working directory of the calling process (like .BR symlink ()). If .I linkpath is absolute, then .I newdirfd is ignored. .SH RETURN VALUE On success, zero is returned. On error, \-1 is returned, and .I errno is set appropriately. .SH ERRORS .TP .B EACCES Write access to the directory containing .I linkpath is denied, or one of the directories in the path prefix of .I linkpath did not allow search permission. (See also .BR path_resolution (7).) .TP .B EDQUOT The user's quota of resources on the filesystem has been exhausted. The resources could be inodes or disk blocks, depending on the filesystem implementation. .TP .B EEXIST .I linkpath already exists. .TP .B EFAULT .IR target " or " linkpath " points outside your accessible address space." .TP .B EIO An I/O error occurred. .TP .B ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving .IR linkpath . .TP .B ENAMETOOLONG .IR target " or " linkpath " was too long." .TP .B ENOENT A directory component in .I linkpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or .I target is the empty string. .TP .B ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available. .TP .B ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry. .TP .B ENOTDIR A component used as a directory in .I linkpath is not, in fact, a directory. .TP .B EPERM The filesystem containing .I linkpath does not support the creation of symbolic links. .TP .B EROFS .I linkpath is on a read-only filesystem. .PP The following additional errors can occur for .BR symlinkat (): .TP .B EBADF .I newdirfd is not a valid file descriptor. .TP .B ENOENT .I linkpath is a relative pathname and .IR newdirfd refers to a directory that has been deleted. .TP .B ENOTDIR .I linkpath is relative and .I newdirfd is a file descriptor referring to a file other than a directory. .SH VERSIONS .BR symlinkat () was added to Linux in kernel 2.6.16; library support was added to glibc in version 2.4. .SH CONFORMING TO .BR symlink (): SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008. .\" SVr4 documents additional error codes EDQUOT and ENOSYS. .\" See .\" .BR open (2) .\" re multiple files with the same name, and NFS. .BR symlinkat (): POSIX.1-2008. .SH NOTES No checking of .I target is done. Deleting the name referred to by a symbolic link will actually delete the file (unless it also has other hard links). If this behavior is not desired, use .BR link (2). .SS Glibc notes On older kernels where .BR symlinkat () is unavailable, the glibc wrapper function falls back to the use of .BR symlink (2). When .I linkpath is a relative pathname, glibc constructs a pathname based on the symbolic link in .IR /proc/self/fd that corresponds to the .IR newdirfd argument. .SH SEE ALSO .BR ln (1), .BR lchown (2), .BR link (2), .BR lstat (2), .BR open (2), .BR readlink (2), .BR rename (2), .BR unlink (2), .BR path_resolution (7), .BR symlink (7) .SH COLOPHON This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux .I man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at \%http://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.