I'm trying to create a bunch of symbolic links, but I can't figure out why this is working
ln -s /Users/niels/something/foo ~/bin/foo_link while this
cd /Users/niels/something ln -s foo ~/bin/foo_link is not.
I believe it has something to do with foo_link linking to foo in /Users/niels/bin instead of /Users/niels/something
So the question is, how do I create a symbolic link that points to an absolute path, without actually typing it?
For reference, I am using Mac OS X 10.9 and Zsh.
The easiest way to link to the current directory as an absolute path, without typing the whole path string would be:
ln -s -- "$(pwd)/foo" ~/bin/foo_link or if any component of the current working directory's path is a symlink itself and you want to link to the physical path:
ln -s -- "$(pwd -P)/foo" ~/bin/foo_link The target (first) argument for the ln -s command works relative to the symbolic link's location, not your current directory. It helps to know that, essentially, the created symlink (the second argument) simply holds the text you provide for the first argument.
Therefore, if you do the following:
cd some_directory ln -s foo foo_link and then move that link around
mv foo_link ../some_other_directory ls -l ../some_other_directory you will see that foo_link tries to point to foo in the directory it is residing in. This also works with symbolic links pointing to relative paths. If you do the following:
ln -s ../foo yet_another_link and then move yet_another_link to another directory and check where it points to, you'll see that it always points to ../foo. This is the intended behaviour, since many times symbolic links might be part of a directory structure that can reside in various absolute paths.
In your case, when you create the link by typing
ln -s foo ~/bin/foo_link foo_link just holds a link to foo, relative to its location. Putting $(pwd) in front of the target argument's name simply adds the current working directory's absolute path, so that the link is created with an absolute target.
source_file (first) argument is where the link points, which is verbatim what you enter on the command. The target_file (second) argument becomes the name of the link unless what you enter is a directory, in which case the link name is the same as the basename of the source_file but placed in the directory target_file. ln manpage, target is the first argument (where the link points to) whereas the second argument is simply referred to as the link (source is not mentioned). target and the second link (man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ln.1.html). But in BSD (including OS X) the first is called source and the second target (freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?ln). Quite confusing. Using the -r (--relative) flag will make this work:
ln -sr foo ~/bin/foo_link 
-r is a GNUism, i.e. non POSIX so won't work in the OP case as the standard OS X ln command is BSD based. To save some typing, you can do
ln -s "$PWD"/foo ~/bin/foo_link Use realpath
cd /Users/niels/something ln -s "$(realpath foo)" ~/bin/foo_link How about:
$ cd /Users/niels/something $ ln -s ./foo ~/bin/foo_link 