link

, unlink

- link and unlink files and directories

Synopsis

/usr/sbin/link existing-file new-file

/usr/xpg4/bin/link existing-file new-file

/usr/sbin/unlink file

Description

The link and unlink commands link and unlink files and directories. Only super-users can use these commands on directories.

Use link to create a new file that points to an existing file. The existing-file and new-file operands specify the existing file and newly-created files. See OPERANDS.

Note that the ZFS file system does not support links between directories.

link and unlink directly invoke the link(2) and unlink(2) system calls, performing exactly what they are told to do and abandoning all error checking. This differs from the ln(1) command. See ln(1).

While linked files and directories can be removed using unlink, it is safer to use rm(1) and rmdir(1) instead. See rm(1) and rmdir(1).

/usr/xpg4/bin/link

If the existing file being hard linked is itself a symbolic link, then the newly created file (new-file) will be a hard link to the file referenced by the symbolic link, not to the symbolic link object itself (existing-file).

Operands

The following operands are supported:

existing-file

Specifies the name of the existing file to be linked.

file

Specifies the name of the file to be unlinked.

new-file

Specifies the name of newly created (linked) file.

Environment Variables

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of link: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

/usr/xpg4/bin/link

See Also

ln(1), rm(1), link(2), unlink(2), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5)