Symbolic link

In computing, a symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is the nickname for any file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution.

Symbolic links were already present by 1978 in minicomputer operating systems from DEC and Data General's RDOS. Today they are supported by the POSIX operating system standard, most Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X and Windows operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and to some degree in Windows 2000 and Windows XP in the form of Shortcut files.

Overview

A symbolic link contains a text string that is automatically interpreted and followed by the operating system as a path to another file or directory. This other file or directory is called the "target". The symbolic link is a second file that exists independently of its target. If a symbolic link is deleted, its target remains unaffected. If a symbolic link points to a target, and sometime later that target is moved, renamed or deleted, the symbolic link is not automatically updated or deleted, but continues to exist and still points to the old target, now a non-existing location or file. Symbolic links pointing to moved or non-existing targets are sometimes called broken, orphaned, dead, or dangling.