Commands using ln sorted by votes

Commands using ln (35)

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Repoint an existing symlink to a new location

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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
22

ln -nsf <TARGET> <LINK>

rdc · 2011-07-14 14:07:06 26
Relocate a file or directory, but keep it accessible on the old location throug a simlink.

Used for moving stuff around on a fileserver
This is sample output - yours may be different.
18

mv $1 $2 && ln -s $2/$(basename $1) $(dirname $1)

svg · 2009-05-25 08:54:36 276
Stop Flash from tracking everything you do.

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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ ll .macromedia .adobe
lrwxrwxrwx 1 abc abc 9 Dec 29 21:07 .macromedia -> /dev/null
lrwxrwxrwx 1 abc abc 9 Dec 29 21:07 .adobe -> /dev/null
```
18

for i in ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia ; do ( rm $i/ -rf ; ln -s /dev/null $i ) ; done

mhs · 2010-12-29 13:23:48 14
Recover tmp flash videos (deleted immediately by the browser plugin)

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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ls /tmp/Flash*
```
17

for h in `find /proc/*/fd -ilname "/tmp/Flash*" 2>/dev/null`; do ln -s "$h" `readlink "$h" | cut -d' ' -f1`; done

hons · 2011-03-02 09:43:42 12
Symlink all files from a base directory to a target directory

Simple and easy to remember, if it already exists then it just ignores it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

ln -s /BASE/* /TARGET/

thehitman · 2013-09-12 18:47:35 11
Replace duplicate files by hardlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

fdupes -r -1 path | while read line; do j="0"; for file in ${line[*]}; do if [ "$j" == "0" ]; then j="1"; else ln -f ${line// .*/} $file; fi; done; done

piti · 2011-06-26 10:45:52 7
Sort your music

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

for file in *.mp3;do mkdir -p "$(mp3info -p "%a/%l" "$file")" && ln -s "$file" "$(mp3info -p "%a/%l/%t.mp3" "$file")";done

matthewbauer · 2009-08-05 17:04:34 9
c_rehash replacement

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

for file in *.pem; do ln -s $file `openssl x509 -hash -noout -in $file`.0; done

darkpand · 2009-06-30 17:42:07 103
Creates a symbolic link or overwrites an existing one

-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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

ln -nvfs /source /destination

daniele · 2010-11-28 17:22:37 5
Symlink all files from a base directory to a target directory

Symlinks all files in the base directory to the target directory then lists all of the created symlinks.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

for f in $(ls -d /base/*); do ln -s $f /target; done && ls -al /target

damiancarrillo · 2009-02-26 04:48:19 5
Link a deep tree of files all into on directory

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

find /deep/tree/ -type f -print0|xargs -0 -n1 -I{} ln -s '{}' .

dinomite · 2010-12-21 13:00:33 7
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 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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

tag() { local t="$HOME/tags/$1"; [ -d $t ] || mkdir -p $t; shift; ln $* $t;}

bartonski · 2012-02-08 12:40:45 18
macOS: Save disk space by moving apps to external drives

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 is sample output - yours may be different.
2

sudo mv /Applications/foo /Volumes/bar/Applications/foo && sudo ln -s /Volumes/bar/Applications/foo /Applications/foo

realkstrawn93 · 2022-01-20 18:03:36 472
Populate a folder with symbolic links to files listed in an m3u playlist.

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 is sample output - yours may be different.
1

(IFS=$'\n'; ln -sf $(awk '((NR % 2) != 0 && NR > 1) {print "prefix" $0}' list.m3u) target_folder)

lxe · 2011-09-25 16:45:28 7
Replace duplicate files by hardlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

fdupes -r -1 Neu | while read line; do j="0"; buf=""; for file in ${line[*]}; do if [ "$j" == "0" ]; then j="1"; buf=$file; else ln -f $buf $file; fi; done; done

bugmenot · 2012-01-20 22:26:54 4
Replace duplicate files by hardlinks

This variation can handle file paths containing spaces.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

fdupes -R -1 path | while read -r line; do (echo $line | xargs -n 1 | (first="true"; firstfile=""; while read file; do if [ "$first" == "true" ]; then first="false"; firstfile=$file; else ln --force "$firstfile" "$file"; fi; done)); done

eclewis · 2012-02-01 15:08:18 4
shell function which allows you to tag files by creating symbolic links directories in a 'tags' folder.

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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

tag() { local t="$HOME/tags/$1"; [ -d $t ] || mkdir -p $t; shift; local i; for i in $*; do ln -s $(readlink -f $i) $t;done}

MeanderingCode · 2012-02-10 15:43:02 4
Symlink all files from a base directory to a target directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

ln -s /base/* /target && ls -l /target

mattcen · 2012-08-22 11:27:40 6
RELINK a lot of broken symlinks - FIX broken symlinks after rsync site to new server

After you run this script, you can check status for broken symlink with this command: find -L . -type l
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find /PATHNAME -type l | while read nullsymlink ; do wrongpath=$(readlink "$nullsymlink") ; right=$(echo "$wrongpath" | sed s'|OLD_STRING|NEW_STRING|') ; ln -fs "$right" "$nullsymlink" ; done

iDudo · 2015-04-14 14:58:41 16
Link all the files in this directory to that directory

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cd /this/directory; for f in *; do ln -s `pwd`/$f /that/directory; done

jonty · 2009-02-05 13:21:16 48
Install unrar on Linux box from sources
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cd /usr/src ; wget http://www.rarlab.com/rar/unrarsrc-4.0.2.tar.gz ; tar xvfz unrarsrc-4.0.2.tar.gz ; cd unrar ; ln -s makefile.unix Makefile ; make clean ; make ; make install

yababay · 2010-12-09 10:35:28 7
Recursively scan directories for mp3s and pass them to mplayer
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

$ find . -iname *.mp3 | while read line ; do ln -s "$line" $(echo -e "$line" | openssl md5).mp3 ; done ; mpg123 *.mp3

yababay · 2011-01-02 20:54:37 4
Stop adobe and Flash from tracking everything you do.

A safer way to block adobe and macromedia flash tracking and spyware
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

adobenospy() { for I in ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia ; do ( [ -d $I ] && rm -rf $I ; ln -s -f /dev/null $I ) ; done }

Timothy · 2011-06-08 14:34:52 6
Mark a directory as one where something failed

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

fail () { ln -s /nonexistent 0_FAIL_${1}; }

pipeliner · 2011-11-06 20:14:33 4
Symlink most recent file to 'latest' using full paths.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ln -s "`find /path -type f -iname $(ls -t /path | head -1 )`" /path/latest

logikal · 2011-12-21 07:20:17 4
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List your installed Firefox extensions

Find C/C++ source files

Find C/C++ source files and headers in the current directory.

list files recursively by size

View ~/.ssh/known_hosts key information

Will return the SSH server key information for each host you have in your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, including key size, key fingerprint, key IP address or domain name, and key type.

List out classes in of all htmls in directory

Lists out all classes used in all *.html files in the currect directory. usefull for checking if you have left out any style definitions, or accidentally given a different name than you intended. ( I have an ugly habit of accidentally substituting camelCase instead of using under_scores: i would name soemthing counterBox instead of counter_box) WARNING: assumes you give classnames in between double quotes, and that you apply only one class per element.

Automator Bash script to create Clean zips in MacOS Finder without __MACOSX metadata

Finder compresses to ZIP but always includes extraneous metadata files (__MACOSX and .DS_Store) files and folders that may confuse other programs. One alternative is creating them and then editing the ZIP. This can work standalone or in an automator script accepting multiple selections (files or folders) and creating one zip per argument/selected file without that metada.

convert single digit to double digits

Uses 'rename' to pad zeros in front of first existing number in each filename. The "--" is not required, but it will prevent errors on filenames which start with "-". You can change the "2d" to any number you want, equaling the total numeric output: aka, 4d = ????, 8d = ????????, etc. I setup a handful of handy functions to this effect (because I couldn't figure out how to insert a var for the value) in the form of 'padnum?', such as: padnum5 () { /usr/bin/rename 's/\d+/sprintf("%05d",$&)/e' -- $@ } Which would change a file "foo-1.txt" to "foo-00001.txt"

fast access to any of your favorite directory.

example: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- user@ubuntu:~/workspace/SVN/haystak-repos/trunk/internal/src$ addpi -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now that directory is in the list of fast access directories. You can switch to it anytime like this: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- user@ubuntu:~$ pi internal` user@ubuntu:~/workspace/SVN/haystak-repos/trunk/internal/src$ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note the backquote ( the symbol that shares its key with ~ in the keyboard ) pi will switch you to that directory. To see the list of all fast access directories you have to say "cat ~/.pi"

List recorded formular fields of Firefox

When you fill a formular with Firefox, you see things you entered in previous formulars with same field names. This command list everything Firefox has registered. Using a "delete from", you can remove anoying Google queries, for example ;-)

Generate diff of first 500 lines of two files

Useful for massive files where doing a full diff would take too long. This just runs diff on the first 500 lines of each. The use of subshells to feed STDIN is quite a useful construct.

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Commands using ln (35)

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