In Linux, a symbolic link is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file or directory. It allows you to create multiple links to a file or directory, with each link having its own name. When you access the symbolic link, it transparently redirects you to the file or directory that it is linked to. This can be useful for creating shortcuts to frequently used files or directories, or for creating multiple names for the same file or directory.
To create a symbolic link in Linux, you can use the “ln” command with the “-s” option. For example, to create a symbolic link to a file called “original.txt” with the name “link.txt”, you can use the following command:
ln -s original.txt link.txt
You can then access the file “original.txt” by using the name “link.txt”.
Symbolic links are different from hard links, which are another type of link that you can create in Linux. A hard link is a direct link to the physical file on the filesystem, rather than a reference to the file’s path like a symbolic link. This means that hard links cannot be used to link to directories or to files on different filesystems, but they can be more efficient to access because there is no need to follow the reference to find the file.
