LN(1)

💅 LN(1) — General Commands Manual, but make it group chat 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the ln(1) page from the General Commands Manual. This is the file-linking manual, and it is genuinely giving filesystem matchmaker energy 💖.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

ln — make links between files. That's the whole name section. Short, iconic, periodt ✨.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME
ln [OPTION]... TARGET
ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY
ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Make links between files. Literally that. It's the main-character job of ln, and I'm obsessed 🫶.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

Okay bestie, here is the full options buffet — no skipping, no cap:

• --backup[=<CONTROL>] — make a backup of each existing destination file 💾
• -b — like --backup but does not accept an argument
• -f, --force — remove existing destination files
• -i, --interactive — prompt whether to remove existing destination files
• -n, --no-dereference — treat LINK_NAME as a normal file if it is a symbolic link to a directory
• -L, --logical — follow TARGETs that are symbolic links
• -P, --physical — make hard links directly to symbolic links
• -s, --symbolic — make symbolic links instead of hard links
• -S, --suffix <SUFFIX> — override the usual backup suffix
• -t, --target-directory <DIRECTORY> — specify the DIRECTORY in which to create the links
• -T, --no-target-directory — treat LINK_NAME as a normal file always
• -r, --relative — create symbolic links relative to link location
• -v, --verbose — print name of each linked file
• -h, --help — Print help
• -V, --version — Print version
• <files> — the <files> placeholder, kept exactly as it appears in the options list 🫶

🔥 EXTRA 🔥

Okay, form-by-form, because the synopsis has four whole moods:

1. In the 1st form, create a link to TARGET with the name LINK_NAME.
2. In the 2nd form, create a link to TARGET in the current directory.
3. In the 3rd and 4th forms, create links to each TARGET in DIRECTORY.

Create hard links by default, symbolic links with --symbolic. By default, each destination (name of new link) should not already exist. When creating hard links, each TARGET must exist. Symbolic links can hold arbitrary text; if later resolved, a relative link is interpreted in relation to its parent directory. That last part is the lore, bestie 🌈.

The backup suffix is '~', unless set with --suffix or SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX. The version control method may be selected via the --backup option or through the VERSION_CONTROL environment variable. Here are the values:

• none, off — never make backups (even if --backup is given)
• numbered, t — make numbered backups
• existing, nil — numbered if numbered backups exist, simple otherwise
• simple, never — always make simple backups

👑 VERSION 👑

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0 is the version on this page. Slay 💅.

xoxo, your ln(1) bestie — source/version: v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-17 💖🫶✨