Peter B. Steiger wrote:
On Sat, 2006-05-27 at 22:57 -0400, rblythe wrote:
ln -s -v ../../path/to/target somename or directory
Specifically what I don't understand is the ../../ portion.
Well, do you understand the use of . and .. as directory names in *nix
(and for that matter MSDOS) environments? The period by itself . is the
current directory, and the double period .. is the parent directory. So
if you're sitting at the console with the current directory
(pwd) /foo/bar/baz/bat/ then .. would be /foo/bar/baz/ and ../.. would
be /foo/bar/, right?
You can use this to link a nearby directory tree. Say application 1
expects to find libraries in /foo/bar/lib1/app but application 2 expects
to find those same libraries in /foo/bar/lib2/app. Rather than create
two copies of an identical library, you might cd /foo/bar/lib2/app and
write:
ln -s -v ../../lib1/app/somelib.so
This would create a symbolic link in /foo/bar/lib2/app called somelib.so
that pointed back to /foo/bar/lib1/app/somelib.so . By using the
grandparent (../../) folder name, you maintain relative positions even
if the whole /foo path changes to /fue - /fue/bar/lib2/app/somelib.so
would still successfully point back two directories then down into
lib1/app regardless of the top level directory name change.
Probably way more detail than you wanted, but that's the whole story :-)
Thank you. This explanation was very clear and truly helpful. Now I
understand.
rblythe
--
http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support
FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html
Unsubscribe: See the above information page
