symlinks - Unix, Linux Command
NAME
symlinks - symbolic link maintenance utility
SYNOPSIS
symlinks [
-cdrstv ]
dirlist
DESCRIPTION
symlinks is a useful utility for maintainers of FTP sites, CDROMs,
and Linux software distributions.
It scans directories for symbolic links and lists them on stdout,
often revealing flaws in the filesystem tree.
Each link is output with a classification of
relative, absolute, dangling, messy, lengthy, or
other_fs.
relative links are those expressed as paths relative to the directory in which
the links reside, usually independent of the mount point of the filesystem.
absolute links are those given as an absolute path from the root directory
as indicated by a leading slash (/).
dangling links are those for which 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).
messy links are links which contain unnecessary slashes or dots in the path.
These are cleaned up as well when
-c is specified.
lengthy links are 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.
other_fs are those links whose target currently resides on a different filesystem
from where symlinks was run (most useful with
-r ).
OPTIONS
Tag | Description |
-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.
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.
|
-r |
recursively operate on subdirectories within the same filesystem.
|
-s |
causes
lengthy links to be detected.
|
-t |
is used to test for what
symlinks would do if
-c were specified, but without really changing anything.
|
-v |
show all symbolic links. By default,
relative links are not shown unless
-v is specified.
|
BUGS
symlinks does not recurse or change links across filesystems.
AUTHOR
symlinks has been written by Mark Lord <mlord@bnr.ca>, the developer and maintainer
of the IDE Performance Package for linux.
SEE ALSO
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