How do I make symbolic links invisible in the Finder?

Question

I use SetFile via the terminal to render files and folders invisible inside Finder windows. This does not appear to work on symbolic links: the symlink destination is made invisible, rather than the symlink itself.

I see a number of symlinks in / which are invisible in the Finder (e.g. /etc -> private/etc), so it seems to be possible. Can I duplicate this behavior?

Answer 1

To hide:

chflags -h hidden <symlink>

To show again:

chflags -h nohidden <symlink>

Answer 2

Reading fail.

-P                                # perform action on symlink instead of following it

This flag has strange indenting in SetFile -h, and I must have just ignored it assuming it was related to the -m date flag.

So,

SetFile -P -a V my_symlink

Answer 3

If you use ln -s source_file target_file from a terminal you'll get e.g. /etc -> private/etc shown in the ls -la - but only shown the target_file in the folder.