.\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source. .\" .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt; .\" 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson. .\" .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are .\" preserved on all copies. .\" .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a .\" permission notice identical to this one .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working .\" professionally. .\" .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. .\" .\" Modified Fri Jul 23 22:01:51 1993 Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) .\" Modified Sun Aug 21 18:18:14 1994: Michael Haardt's NFS diffs were .\" applied by hand (faith@cs.unc.edu) .\" .TH LINK 2 "17 August 1994" "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME link \- make a new name for a file .SH SYNOPSIS .B #include .sp .BI "int link(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath ); .SH DESCRIPTION .B link creates a new link (also known as a hard link) to an existing file. If .I newpath exists it will .I not be overwritten. This new name may be used exactly as the old one for any operation; both names refer to the same file (and so have the same permissions and ownership) and it is impossible to tell which name was the `original'. .SH "RETURN VALUE" On success, zero is returned. On error, \-1 is returned, and .I errno is set appropriately. .SH ERRORS .TP 0.8i .B EXDEV .IR oldpath " and " newpath are not on the same filesystem. .TP .B EPERM The filesystem containing .IR oldpath " and " newpath does not support the creation of hard links. .TP .B EFAULT .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space." .TP .B EACCES Write access to the directory containing .I newpath is not allowed for the process's effective uid, or one of the directories in .IR oldpath " or " newpath did not allow search (execute) permission. .TP .B ENAMETOOLONG .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long." .TP .B ENOENT A directory component in .I oldpath " or " newpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link. .TP .B ENOTDIR A component used as a directory in .IR oldpath " or " newpath is not, in fact, a directory. .TP .B ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available. .TP .B EROFS The file is on a read-only filesystem. .TP .B EEXIST .I newpath already exists. .TP .B EMLINK The file referred to by .I oldpath already has the maximum number of links to it. .TP .B ELOOP .IR oldpath " or " newpath contains a reference to a circular symbolic link, ie a symbolic link whose expansion contains a reference to itself. .TP .B ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry. .TP .B EPERM .I oldpath is the .B . " or " .. entry of a directory. .SH NOTES Hard links, as created by .BR link , cannot span filesystems. Use .B symlink if this is required. .SH "CONFORMING TO" SVID, AT&T, POSIX, BSD 4.3 .SH BUGS On NFS file systems, the return code may be wrong in case the NFS server performs the link creation and dies before it can say so. Use .IR stat(2) to find out if the link got created. .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR symlink "(2), " unlink "(2), " rename "(2), " open (2), .BR stat "(2), " ln "(1), " link (8).