SYMLINKS(8)                                                                                                          SYMLINKS(8)



NAME
       symlinks - symbolic link maintenance utility

SYNOPSIS
       symlinks [ -cdorstv ] dirlist

DESCRIPTION
       symlinks  is  a useful utility for maintainers of FTP sites, CDROMs, and Linux software distributions.  It scans directo-
       ries 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 use-
       ful with -r ).

OPTIONS
       -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  short-
              ened.  Links affected by -c are prefixed with changed in the output.

       -d     causes dangling links to be removed.

       -o     fix links on other filesystems encountered while recursing.  Normally, other filesystems encountered are not modi-
              fied by symlinks.

       -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 <mlordATpobox.com>, the original developer and maintainer of  the  IDE  Performance
       Package for linux, the Linux IDE Driver subsystem, hdparm, and a current day libata hacker.

SEE ALSO
       symlink(2)



Version 1.4                                               October 2008                                               SYMLINKS(8)