Remove soft link but not the target

directoryrmsymlink

I have a directory that contains a link to another directory that I just created. I would like to remove the link but preserve the directory my link was pointing to. How do I do this?

> mkdir rgac
> ln -s /actual_dir_with_data/ /rgac/

Best Answer

rm /rgac/actual_dir_with_data should do nicely (you created a link probably called actual_dir_with_data in /rgac). Don't worry, rm(1) doesn't remove directories unless specifically told to do so. And you can then delete only /rgac by rmdir /rgac (see rmdir(1)).

Probably what you wanted to do was ln -s /actual_dir_with_data /rgac

Related Solutions

Replace symbolic link which linked to directory target

You want the -T option:

$ mkdir v1
$ ln -s v1 foo
$ ls -FlA | grep foo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 phil phil     2 2011-09-05 01:58 foo -> v1/
$ mkdir v2
$ ln -s -T -f v2 foo
$ ls -FlA | grep foo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 phil phil     2 2011-09-05 01:59 foo -> v2/

Symbolic Links – How to Find the Original File

Try this :

readlink -f /path/file

( last target of your symlink if there's more than one level )

If you just want the next level of symbolic link, use :

readlink /path/file

Edit 2020:

now, GNU coreutils own realpath :

realpath /path/file

similar to readlink -f by default

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Replace symbolic link which linked to directory target

Symbolic Links – How to Find the Original File

Related Question