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I don't understand what I'm doing wrong today with trying to create.

Inside my current directory, I recreated an empty directory called input. I would like to symlink this to

../../../../opt/build/db/output

So within my current directory, I did

ln -s ../../../../opt/build/db/output input

But when I do ls -l input, I see

output -> ../../../../opt/build/db/output

It created a directory within input called output that's symlinke to ../../../../opt/build/db/output , but this is not what I want. I don't want an output directory within input. I want input directly symlinekd to ../../../../opt/build/db/output . What am I doing wrong here? I'm pretty sure this is how I've always created symlinks.

I also removed the input folder, and then ran the command again and it worked as expected. I guess I can't have the existing input directory?

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  • Why not use absolute paths instead of relative paths? Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 17:29
  • @Peregrino69 I'm copying a symlnk structure that's in the existing codebase and it uses relative paths. not sure why Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 17:39

1 Answer 1

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The mistake you made was to create input under your current directory before invoking your ln -s command to link it. ln wants to create the link from scratch, not "link" existing directories together.

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  • I see. I could've sworn in the past when I used ln -s, I create the directory first and then try to symlink, but maybe I'm misremembering. With that said, is there a way to link existing directories together like I tried todo? Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 18:06
  • No, when creating a link, whether it's a hard link or soft/symbolic link, the entity being created (the last item on the ln command line) cannot exist yet. Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 22:18

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