Hello, I want links to files in one directory to appear in another directory, when i do a directory listing for that dir.

For example, I want links of all subdirs and files of hdf/video/tv.shows to appear in video/tv.shows , when i do an ls of video/tv.shows, and to work when I use mplayer on it. I've not been able to achieve this with ln, especially not the second requirement, that the links should be usable too...

Is it possible?

Thanks for taking the time.

what command syntax did you use? and what happened?

I'm coming from Solaris and can't reach a linux box right now to do a man. But I would try

cd video/tv.shows
ln -s ../../hdf/video/tv.shows/* .

If the "*" didn't work in this setting, then one at a time.

Of course, you gave relative paths, so I'm assuming the paths above are correct. You could avoid that assumption by using absolute paths.

Check `man ln` in your OS to see if that correct for you.

I don't see a recursion option in ln.

To link all files and directories at one level, I tried:
(Run in the target directory--ie where the links will be**)
ln -s /path1/path2/*
This does not work, and I am a little fuzzy as to why not. But, this works:

for item in `ls /path1/path2/`;do ln -s /path/path/$item; done
This links everything in /path1/path2 into the current folder. I suppose you could make it recursive by adding a bit more code.....first, you'd have to use SED or something to filter the extra junk you get when you do ls -R.

**I always find that "linking in" is most reliable and consistent---ie run the ln command in the directory where the links will be.

If you have nested directories and you want links to all the files in the hierarchy to be created in one directory you can do this from the directory you want the links created in:
I've done that here and mplayer has no problem using the links.