symbolic link, a type of file that is a reference to another file or folder
13
votes
3answers
980 views
Why is /tmp a symlink to /private/tmp?
Why is /tmp a symlink to /private/tmp on Mac OS X? In other words, why isn't /tmp just a regular directory, like on Linux or BSD? I understand how it works and I don't mind it, I'm just interested in ...
10
votes
1answer
965 views
What's the difference between alias and link?
I see that the size of alias is 167.7kB, whereas symbolic link is just 4kB.
What's the difference between the two, or what's the purpose of them?
Which one is preferable? For the case that the ...
3
votes
2answers
92 views
Restoring finder icon
I have moved certain sections (downloads, music, pictures) of my user directory from my SSD to my HDD via symlinks. I have successfully changed over the image of the folder which can be seen in the ...
1
vote
0answers
203 views
How to keep /Volumes symbolic links from getting auto-deleted?
I moved my /Users directory to a separate disk/partition (to get it off my SSD boot disk) as per this post. However, some things (like double-clicks of .html files to be viewed in a an Opera browser) ...
3
votes
5answers
821 views
Why can't I use .app bundles symlinked into /Applications as default in the 'open with' dialog?
I have installed emacs with homebrew, with the --cocoa flag, which makes homebrew create an .app bundle in /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/<version>/Emacs.app. I have symlinked the .app bundle into ...
2
votes
1answer
439 views
Is it safe to Symlink your applications folder?
If you had a NAS and you were going to store all your applications on there, would it be safe to - on the computers accessing it - replace their application folder with a symlink to the folder on the ...
1
vote
1answer
515 views
“readlink” gets the original path of a symlink; what's the equivalent for Mac aliases?
In the terminal, I can use readlink on a symlink and it prints the target path of the symlink. E.g.
ln -s original.txt symlink.txt
readlink symlink.txt # prints original.txt
How do I do this for ...
4
votes
1answer
641 views
How to make an alias (Cmd-L) using command line?
With Finder, Cmd-L is a short-cut to make an alias of a file/directory. How can I use the command line to do that?
I tried 'ln -s', but it generates the 'Symbolic Link', not 'Alias'.
