Instead of deleting an existing symlink and then re-creating it pointing at the new location, it is possible to perform the same action with this one command. Interesting discussion on whether this is possible to do atomically here: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=526119

Used for moving stuff around on a fileserver

Brute force way to block all LSO cookies on a Linux system with the non-free Flash browser plugin. Works just fine for my needs. Enjoy. Show Sample Output

Newer versions of the flashplayer browser plugin delete the tmp flash video immediately after opening a filehandle to prevent the user from "exporting" the video by simply copying the /tmp/FlashXYZ file. This command searches such deleted flash videos and creates symbolic links to the opened filehandle with the same name as the deleted file. This allows you to play your flash-videos (from e.g. youtube) with e.g. mplayer or copy the buffered video if you want to keep it. Show Sample Output

Simple and easy to remember, if it already exists then it just ignores it.

This will mv all your mp3 files in the current directory to $ARTIST/$ALBUM/$NAME.mp3 Make sure not to use sudo - as some weird things can happen if the mp3 file doesn't have id3 tags.

When you don't have c_rehash handy. Really simple - if you have a .pem file that doesn't really contain a x509 cert (let's say, newreq.pem), it will create a link, simply called '.0', pointing to that file.

-n: dereference the existing link -v: (optional) to be sure of what is being done -f: force the deletion of the existing one -s: creates a symlink Be careful: the destination can also be a file or a directory and it will be overwritten.

Symlinks all files in the base directory to the target directory then lists all of the created symlinks.

If you want to pull all of the files from a tree that has mixed files and directories containing files, this will link them all into a single directory. Beware of filesystem files-per-directory limits.

The tag function takes a tag name as its first argument, then a list of files which take that tag. The directory $HOME/tags/tagname will then hold symbolic links to each of the tagged files. This function was inspired by tmsu (found at https://bitbucket.org/oniony/tmsu/wiki/Home). Example: tag dog airedale.txt .shizturc weimeraner.pl This will create $HOME/tags/dog which contains symbolic links to airedale.txt .shizturc and weimeraner.pl

Because Mac app bundles contain everything in one place, it makes running them from anywhere, including from a device such as a USB flash drive or external HDD, possible. So if your Mac has a mere 256GB of storage (as mine does), you can free up large quantities of disk space by storing apps like, say, Xcode on external devices.

This command will place symbolic links to files listed in an m3u playlist into a specified folder. Useful for uploading playlists to Google Music. prefix = The full path prefix to file entries in your .m3u file, if the file paths are relative. For example, if you have "Music/folder/song.mp3" in your list.m3u, you might want to specify "/home/username" as your prefix. list.m3u = Path to the playlist target_folder = Path to the target folder in which you would like to create symlinks

This variation can handle file paths containing spaces.

shell function which allows you to tag files by creating symbolic links directories in a 'tags' folder. The tag function takes a tag name as its first argument, then a list of files which take that tag. The directory $HOME/tags/tagname will then hold symbolic links to each of the tagged files. This function was modified from bartonski's (http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/10216) inspired by tmsu (found at https://bitbucket.org/oniony/tmsu/wiki/Home) with readlink function by flxndn (http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/10222). Example: tag dog airedale.txt .shizturc weimeraner.pl This will create $HOME/tags/dog which contains symbolic links to airedale.txt .shizturc and weimeraner.pl

After you run this script, you can check status for broken symlink with this command: find -L . -type l

I find this handy for linking all the bin files in a package to /usr/bin or all the man files to /usr/share/man. You can replace * with */* to operate on all the files in subdirectories.

A safer way to block adobe and macromedia flash tracking and spyware

If you use colored ls(1), the broken symbolic links significantly differ from regular files and directories in the ls listing. In my case it is bright red. 0 is for getting the first place in the list.