MacOS – How to delete/break a symbolic link in Lion

macosssdsymlink

I've made a symbolic link from my SSD to my HDD incorrectly and want to keep the folder on my SSD. How can I delete or break the symlink? Is there a Terminal command that will delete every symbolic link on my Mac?

Best Answer

You can delete the symlink the same way as any other file. It will not follow the link. You can do this in finder by moving the link to the trash, or from the command line using rm path/to/symlink.

Do not attempt to remove all symlinks on your computer. They are used by the system in some places, such as frameworks.

Related Solutions

How to prevent TextMate from overwriting symbolic links

Disable Atomic Saves in Advanced Preferences.

When atomic saves are enabled, TextMate actually writes to a new file on Save and then moves the file over (hence overwriting your symbolic link).

See http://manual.macromates.com/en/saving_files#atomic_saves for more info.

MacOS – How to create a symbolic link to a directory with a space in it

The quote marks are preventing ~ from being expanded to your home folder, so you need to either quote just the part with the space in it:

ln -s ~/"Foo Bar/" Foo

Note: exactly how much is quoted doesn't matter, as long as the space is in the quoted portion and the ~/ isn't. ~/Foo" "Bar/, ~/"Foo Bar"/, ~/Fo"o B"ar/ etc are all equivalent. Also, single- and double-quotes have the same effect on spaces (although they differ on other characters), so ~/'Foo Bar/', ~/Foo' 'Bar/ etc would also work.

You could also use an escape to prevent the space from being treated as a separator:

ln -s ~/Foo\ Bar/ Foo

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Related Solutions

How to prevent TextMate from overwriting symbolic links

MacOS – How to create a symbolic link to a directory with a space in it

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