SYMLINKS(8)

💅 SYMLINKS(8) — the symlink glow-up station

okay bestie, so this is symlinks, from the System Manager's Manual — a symbolic link maintenance utility. yes, it's giving "old school sysadmin" but honestly it's so useful. let's get into it 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

symlinks — the symbolic link maintenance utility 💫 (yes that's the whole name, she's modest)

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

symlinks [ -cdorstv ] dirlist

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so symlinks scans directories for symbolic links and lists them on stdout — and honestly? it's lowkey a broken-link detective 🔍 it's often revealing broken links in the filesystem tree, which is the whole vibe check.

every link gets output with a classification, and there are six: relative, absolute, dangling, messy, lengthy, or other_fs. slay, let's break each one down 💅

• relative links — these are expressed as paths relative to the directory in which the links reside. usually independent of the mount point of the filesystem. very chill, very portable 🫶
• absolute links — these are given as an absolute path from the root directory as indicated by a leading slash (/). main character energy, zero flexibility.
• dangling links — the target of the link does not currently exist 😭 this commonly occurs for absolute links when a filesystem is mounted at other than its customary mount point (such as when the normal root filesystem is mounted at /mnt after booting from alternative media). yeah. that's the sad one.
• messy links — links which contain unnecessary slashes or dots in the path 🙈 these get cleaned up as well when -c is specified.
• lengthy links — links which use "../" more than necessary in the path (eg. /bin/vi -> ../bin/vim) 🌀 these are only detected when -s is specified, and are only cleaned up when -c is also specified. so yes, you need both. team work.
• other_fs — those links whose target currently resides on a different filesystem from where symlinks was run (most useful with -r). crossing the boundary fr fr 🌈

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -c — convert absolute links (within the same filesystem) to relative links ✨ this permits links to maintain their validity regardless of the mount point used for the filesystem — a desirable setup in most cases, no cap. this option also causes any messy links to be cleaned up, and, if -s was also specified, then lengthy links are also shortened. links affected by -c are prefixed with changed in the output 🎀
• -d — causes dangling links to be removed 💀 bye bestie
• -o — fix links on other filesystems encountered while recursing. normally, other filesystems encountered are not modified by symlinks. so this is you giving explicit permission 🫡
• -r — recursively operate on subdirectories within the same filesystem 🌳
• -s — causes lengthy links to be detected 🔍
• -t — used to test for what symlinks would do if -c were specified, but without really changing anything 🙈 the ultimate "what if" simulator, zero commitment
• -v — show all symbolic links. by default, relative links are not shown unless -v is specified 👀

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💀 BUGS 💀

• symlinks does not recurse or change links across filesystems. periodt. that's the limit, she said no. 😭

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

symlinks was created by Mark Lord <mlord@pobox.com>. the current maintainer is J. Brandt Buckley <brandt@runlevel1.com>. legends, both of them 👑

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• symlink(2)

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okay that's the whole thing bestie, go forth and fix those links 💖✨🦋

Version 1.4.3 — April 2014 — SYMLINKS(8), from the System Manager's Manual 🎀 that's the source, the version, and the date all in one cute little sign-off, iykyk 💜