symlinks - symbolic link maintenance utility


SYNOPSIS

       symlinks [ -cdrstv ] dirlist


DESCRIPTION

       symlinks is a useful utility for maintainers of FTP sites,
       CDROMs, and Linux software distributions.  It scans direc­
       tories  for symbolic links and lists them on stdout, often
       revealing flaws in the filesystem tree.

       Each link is output with  a  classification  of  relative,
       absolute, dangling, messy, lengthy, or other_fs.

       relative  links  are  those expressed as paths relative to
       the directory in which the links reside, usually  indepen­
       dent of the mount point of the filesystem.

       absolute  links  are  those given as an absolute path from
       the root directory as indicated by a leading slash (/).

       dangling links are those for which the target of the  link
       does  not currently exist.  This commonly occurs for abso­
       lute links when a filesystem is mounted at other than  its
       customary  mount  point  (such  as  when  the  normal root
       filesystem is mounted at /mnt after booting from  alterna­
       tive media).

       messy links are links which contain unnecessary slashes or
       dots in the path.  These are cleaned up as well when -c is
       specified.

       lengthy  links  are links which use "../" more than neces­
       sary in the path (eg.  /bin/vi ->  ../bin/vim)  These  are
       only  detected  when -s is specified, and are only cleaned
       up when -c is also specified.

       other_fs are those links whose target currently resides on
       a  different  filesystem from where symlinks was run (most
       useful with -r ).


OPTIONS

       -c     convert absolute links (within the same filesystem)
              to  relative links.  This permits links to maintain
              their validity regardless of the mount  point  used
              for  the  filesystem  --  a desirable setup in most
              cases.  This option also causes any messy links  to
              be  cleaned up, and, if -s was also specified, then
              lengthy links are also shortened.   Links  affected
              by -c are prefixed with changed in the output.

       -d     causes dangling links to be removed.

              same filesystem.

       -s     causes lengthy links to be detected.

       -t     is used to test for what symlinks would  do  if  -c
              were  specified,  but  without really changing any­
              thing.

       -v     show all  symbolic  links.   By  default,  relative
              links are not shown unless -v is specified.


BUGS

       symlinks  does not recurse or change links across filesys­
       tems.


AUTHOR

       symlinks has been written by Mark Lord <mlord@bnr.ca>, the
       developer  and  maintainer  of the IDE Performance Package
       for linux.


SEE ALSO

       symlink(2)


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