Symbolic Links

[Angela]

What is Symbolic links in UNIX operating system. Is this a type of file.I want to know about this in brief.

[caradoc]

Symbolic Link is also called as soft link. Unlike a hard link, a symbolic link does not contain the data in the target file. It simply points to another entry somewhere in the file system. When a user delete a target file, symbolic links to that file become unusable, whereas hard links preserve the contents of the file.

[rachelle]

A user can create a symbolic link in UNIX, by using the ln command.

The syntax of its usage is as below:

ln -s source_file example

Here source_file is replaced with the name of the existing file for which you want to create the symbolic link. example is replaced with the name of the symbolic link.