SYMLINKS(8)

NAME
       symlinks - symbolic link maintenance utility

SYNOPSIS
       symlinks [ -cdrv ] 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.

       -r     recursively  operate  on  subdirectories within the
              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 lt;mlord@bnr.ca, the
       developer  and  maintainer  of the IDE Performance Package
       for linux.

SEE ALSO
       symlink(2)