.\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source. .\" .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt; .\" 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson. .\" .\" 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 .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.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. .\" .\" 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 2010-09-20 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME symlink \- make a new name for a file .SH SYNOPSIS .B #include .sp .BI "int symlink(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath ); .sp .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 .ad b .SH DESCRIPTION .BR symlink () creates a symbolic link named .I newpath which contains the string .IR oldpath . 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 newpath exists it will .I not be overwritten. .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 newpath is denied, or one of the directories in the path prefix of .I newpath did not allow search permission. (See also .BR path_resolution (7).) .TP .B EEXIST .I newpath already exists. .TP .B EFAULT .IR oldpath " or " newpath " 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 newpath . .TP .B ENAMETOOLONG .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long." .TP .B ENOENT A directory component in .I newpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or .I oldpath 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 newpath is not, in fact, a directory. .TP .B EPERM The file system containing .I newpath does not support the creation of symbolic links. .TP .B EROFS .I newpath is on a read-only file system. .SH "CONFORMING TO" SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. .\" SVr4 documents additional error codes EDQUOT and ENOSYS. .\" See .\" .BR open (2) .\" re multiple files with the same name, and NFS. .SH NOTES No checking of .I oldpath is done. Deleting the name referred to by a symlink will actually delete the file (unless it also has other hard links). If this behavior is not desired, use .BR link (2). .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 symlinkat (2), .BR unlink (2), .BR path_resolution (7), .BR symlink (7) .SH COLOPHON This page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux .I man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.