SYMLINK(2)

NAME
symlink - make a new name for a file

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>

int symlink(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

symlink():
    _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L

DESCRIPTION
symlink() creates a symbolic link named newpath which contains the string 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 .. 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 (S_ISVTX) set.

If newpath exists it will not be overwritten.

RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EACCES
    Write access to the directory containing newpath is denied, or one of the directories in the path prefix of newpath did not allow search permission. (See also path_resolution(7).)

EDQUOT
    The user's quota of resources on the file system has been exhausted. The resources could be inodes or disk blocks, depending on the file system implementation.

EEXIST
    newpath already exists.

EFAULT
    oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.

EIO An I/O error occurred.

ELOOP
    Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving newpath.

ENAMETOOLONG
    oldpath or newpath was too long.

ENOENT
    A directory component in newpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or oldpath is the empty string.

ENOMEM
    Insufficient kernel memory was available.

ENOSPC
    The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry.

ENOTDIR
    A component used as a directory in newpath is not, in fact, a directory.

EPERM
    The file system containing newpath does not support the creation of symbolic links.

EROFS
    newpath is on a read-only file system.

CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES
No checking of 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 link(2).

SEE ALSO
ln(1), lchown(2), link(2), lstat(2), open(2), readlink(2), rename(2), symlinkat(2), unlink(2), path_resolution(7), symlink(7)

COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.50 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.