[buug] ln -sf bug

[Jon McClintock]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 03:12:23PM -0700, Stefan Lasiewski wrote:
> I think it will remove destination files, but not destination directories.
> 
> While this may violate the principal of least suprises, I think it's designed
> that so you don't accidently blow away an active symlink. ... or something

Someone else already posted this, but what you really want is '-n'
(--no-dereference); that way, it won't dereference the target if it's a 
symbolic link. 

So,

	ln -snf linux-2.6.7 linux

Will do the right thing, even if there is already a 'linux' symlink. It
won't, however, remove 'linux' if it's a real directory. As someone else 
pointed out, it will instead create a symbolic link inside the target 
directory with the same name as the source.

The truth is in the man page, it just must be ferreted out:

SYNOPSIS
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET [LINK_NAME]
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY
       ln [OPTION]... --target-directory=DIRECTORY TARGET...

[...cut...]

       tory.  When using the second form with more than one  TAR­
       GET,  the last argument must be a directory;  create links
       in  DIRECTORY  to  each  TARGET. 

(Note that is doesn't say that "more than one TARGET" is necessary to invoke
the second form.)

       -f, --force
              remove existing destination files

(Note that it doesn't say anything about directories. Infer thusly that 
 passing a directory as the last parameter will invoke the "second form".)

       -n, --no-dereference
              treat destination that is a symlink to a  directory
              as if it were a normal file

(Here's the option you want. Treat symlinks to directories as files, for 
 the purpose of --force'ing their deletion.)

Interpreting man pages is indeed an art.

-Jon