Re: Absolute symlink created relatively to the current directory

[Rémy Lefevre]

Alright! It was just an idea to simplify a little bit scripts writing. But if you already thought to that and decided to not implement it, it's no problem.

Rémy.

2013/4/4 Pádraig Brady <address@hidden>

On 04/04/2013 10:54 AM, Rémy Lefevre wrote:
> Hello,
>
> the common way to create a symlink is to run the following command:
>
> ln -s target_path link_path
>
> where target_path is the relative or absolute path to which the symbolic link should point.
>
> In the case of relative symlink, the provided target_path must be relative to the link directory and not to the current working directory (where the ln command is run).
>
> To avoid this drawback, the --relative option have been added to ln since  coreutils-8.16. So, it's now possible to create a relative symlink by passing the target_path relative to the current working directory instead of the link directory.
>
> However, this feature is only available for relative symlink and not for absolute one. So, my proposal is to add a --absolute option to ln, in order to allow absolute symlink creation by providing target_path relatively to the current directory.
>
> Let me know your mind about this idea. In the case of acceptance, I could write a patch to add this feature.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rémy.

We thought about that previously,
but thought it might not be worth it,
as an absolute path is easily achieved by other means:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2012-03/msg00165.html

thanks,
Pádraig.