How do I unlink a symbolic link in Linux?

To remove a symbolic link, use either the rm or unlink command followed by the name of the symlink as an argument. When removing a symbolic link that points to a directory do not append a trailing slash to the symlink name.

Just do a “rm link_naame” and the symlink will be removed. If you end up with a broken link, then you are removing the file rather than the link itself.

In Unix-like operating systems, unlink is a system call and a command line utility to delete files. The program directly interfaces the system call, which removes the file name and (but not on GNU systems) directories like rm and rmdir.

unlink (Unix)

Operating system Unix and Unix-like
Platform Cross-platform
Type Command

Overwriting Symlinks

If you try to create a symbolic link that already exists , the ln command will print an error message. To overwrite the destination path of the symlink, use the -f ( –force ) option.

To view the symbolic links in a directory:

  1. Open a terminal and move to that directory.
  2. Type the command: ls -la. This shall long list all the files in the directory even if they are hidden.
  3. The files that start with l are your symbolic link files.

A symbolic link is a special type of file whose contents are a string that is the pathname of another file, the file to which the link refers. (The contents of a symbolic link can be read using readlink(2).) In other words, a symbolic link is a pointer to another name, and not to an underlying object.

If a symbolic link is deleted, its target remains unaffected. If a symbolic link points to a target, and sometime later that target is moved, renamed or deleted, the symbolic link is not automatically updated or deleted, but continues to exist and still points to the old target, now a non-existing location or file.

Deleting a symbolic link is the same as removing a real file or directory. ls -l command shows all links with second column value 1 and the link points to original file. Link contains the path for original file and not the contents.

Symbolic link (Symlinks/Soft links) are links between files. It is nothing but a shortcut of a file(in windows terms). … But if you delete the source file of the symlink ,symlink of that file no longer works or it becomes “dangling link” which points to nonexistent file . Soft link can span across filesystem.

unlink is a command-line utility for removing a single file. The syntax of the unlink command is as follows: unlink filename. Where filename is the name of the file you want to remove. On success, the command doesn’t produce any output and returns zero.

verb (used with object)

to detach or separate by or as if by undoing one or more connecting links: to unlink hands.

Unlink your address

  1. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Gmail app .
  2. In the top left, tap the Menu .
  3. Scroll down, then tap Settings.
  4. Tap the Gmail account you’d like to unlink from your other account.
  5. In the “Linked Account” section, tap Unlink account.
  6. Choose whether to keep copies of emails from the account.

The owner and group of an existing symbolic link can be changed using lchown(2). The only time that the ownership of a symbolic link matters is when the link is being removed or renamed in a directory that has the sticky bit set (see stat(2)).

program directory in a file manager, it will appear to contain the files inside /mnt/partition/. program. In addition to “symbolic links”, also known as “soft links”, you can instead create a “hard link”. A symbolic or soft link points to a path in the file system.

A hard link is a file that points to the same underlying inode, as another file. In case you delete one file, it removes one link to the underlying inode. Whereas a symbolic link (also known as soft link) is a link to another filename in the filesystem.

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