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nyheat

02-11-2010 06:11 PM

Symbolic link with commands?

Is it possible to create a symbolic link that include commands for the program?

For instance, I do the following to start the program:

./script -somecommannd

I would like to create a symbolic like that includes "-somecommand"

Is this possible? or would I need to create a second script that executes that command, and link to that script?

neonsignal

02-12-2010 12:19 AM

No, the symbolic link is just a representation of the path.

You could consider using an alias instead, eg:

Code:

alias script1='./script -somecommand'

Or as you suggest, use a second script.

Web31337

02-12-2010 01:11 AM

To make a script you can take cat `which zcat` or cat `which gunzip` for instance. That's what can be used globally instead of aliases, but both methods are good.

catkin

02-12-2010 01:14 AM

Another solution is to have multiple symlinks (or hard links) to a single script and program it to behave differently depending on which name it is called with:

Code:

c@CW8:/tmp$ cat test.sh

#!/bin/bash

case "${0##*/}" in

        bar.sh )

                echo "I'm doing bar stuff"

                ;;

        foo.sh )

                echo "I'm doing foo stuff"

                ;;

        test.sh )

                echo "I'm doing test stuff"

                ;;

    * )

                echo "I don't know who I am. Exiting" >&2

                exit 1

esac



exit 0



c@CW8:/tmp$ ln -s test.sh bar.sh

c@CW8:/tmp$ ln -s test.sh foo.sh

c@CW8:/tmp$ ln -s test.sh wibble.sh

c@CW8:/tmp$ ./bar.sh

I'm doing bar stuff

c@CW8:/tmp$ ./foo.sh

I'm doing foo stuff

c@CW8:/tmp$ ./test.sh

I'm doing test stuff

c@CW8:/tmp$ ./wibble.sh

I don't know who I am. Exiting

r3sistance

02-12-2010 02:08 AM

Another potential thing you could do also is make a scripts directory like ~/scripts/ and add it to the $PATH variable, if you make the scripts executable (with chmod).

I am not sure where ubuntu stores such a place where this can be added. In CentOS it can be done in ~/.bash_profile by modifying the line
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
to PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:~/script

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