how to remove a symlink without deleting the destination directory

Snerkel · 01-19-2005, 01:38 PM

hi, i have wondered this for a while and now i need to know because it is really confusing me!

i used the command ln -s but how do i delete the link without deleting the directory it is linked to? because rm or rm -f etc deletes the directory that to link is made with. i have read through many man pages but cannot find a solution.

thanks in advance, ben.

y2k · 01-19-2005, 01:43 PM

Let's assuming for a second that you ran

ln -s /usr/local/bin/program /opt/program

but now you want to remove /opt/program. Well, just remove /opt/program because it will not remove /usr/local/bin/program...

y2k

jonaskoelker · 01-19-2005, 01:45 PM

unless I'm mistaken, this should do what you want:

$ ln -s /some/where here
$ ls -l here
(whatever files you have)
$ rm here
$ ls -l /some/where
(the same files)
$ ^D

Snerkel · 01-20-2005, 11:47 AM

cheers, i was paranoid. i didn want to delete files!