Symbolic link

A symbolic link is an entry in a Unix (or Unix-like) filesystem that allows a directory entry to refer to another directory entry.

Using the 'ls' command, which is standard on these systems, a symbolically linked filed might look something like this:

lrwxrwxrwx    1 jbailey  jbailey         4 2003-02-07 16:49 link -> file

The 'l' in the first column is a hint that this file is a symbolic link. The information at the furthest right indicates that this file is called 'link', and that when you access it, you will see the contents of 'file'.

Symbolic links are created with the ln -s command. For example:

ln -s name_of_real_file name_of_link

For people familiar with Microsoft Windows concepts, a symbolic link is similar to a Windows Shortcut.