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.\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source.
.\"
.\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
.\" 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson.
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
.\" preserved on all copies.
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
.\" permission notice identical to this one
.\"
.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
.\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
.\" professionally.
.\"
.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
.\"
.\" Modified Sat Jul 24 12:01:10 1993 by Rik Faith
.\" Added correction due to Nick Duffek <nsd@bbc.com>, aeb, 960426
.\" Modified Wed Nov 6 04:07:10 1996 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
.\" Modified Fri Jan 31 17:51:14 1997 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
.\"
.TH SYMLINK 2 "21 August 1997" "Linux 2.0.30" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
symlink \- make a new name for a file
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <unistd.h>
.sp
.BI "int symlink(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath );
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B symlink
creates a symbolic link named
.I newpath
which contains the string
.IR 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
.B ..
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 set.
If
.I newpath
exists it will
.I not
be overwritten.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
On success, zero is returned. On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EPERM
The filesystem containing
.IR newpath
does not support the creation of symbolic links.
.TP
.B EFAULT
.IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space."
.TP
.B EACCES
Write access to the directory containing
.I newpath
is not allowed for the process's effective uid, or one of the
directories in
.IR newpath
did not allow search (execute) permission.
.TP
.B ENAMETOOLONG
.IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long."
.TP
.B ENOENT
A directory component in
.I newpath
does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or
.I oldpath
is the empty string.
.TP
.B ENOTDIR
A component used as a directory in
.IR newpath
is not, in fact, a directory.
.TP
.B ENOMEM
Insufficient kernel memory was available.
.TP
.B EROFS
.I newpath
is on a read-only filesystem.
.TP
.B EEXIST
.I newpath
already exists.
.TP
.B ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
.IR newpath .
.TP
.B ENOSPC
The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
entry.
.TP
.B EIO
An I/O error occurred.
.SH NOTES
No checking of
.I 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 behaviour is not
desired, use
.BR link .
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
SVr4, SVID, POSIX, BSD 4.3. SVr4 documents additional error codes
SVr4, SVID, BSD 4.3, X/OPEN. SVr4 documents additional error codes
EDQUOT and ENOSYS.
See
.BR open (2)
re multiple files with the same name, and NFS.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR readlink (2),
.BR link (2),
.BR unlink (2),
.BR rename (2),
.BR open (2),
.BR lstat (2),
.BR ln (1)
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