File: coreutils.info, Node: link invocation, Next: ln invocation, Up: Special file types
12.1 'link': Make a hard link via the link syscall
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'link' creates a single hard link at a time. It is a minimalist
interface to the system-provided 'link' function. *Note (libc)Hard
Links::. It avoids the bells and whistles of the more commonly-used
'ln' command (*note ln invocation::). Synopsis:
link FILENAME LINKNAME
FILENAME must specify an existing file, and LINKNAME must specify a
nonexistent entry in an existing directory. 'link' simply calls 'link
(FILENAME, LINKNAME)' to create the link.
On a GNU system, this command acts like 'ln --directory
--no-target-directory FILENAME LINKNAME'. However, the '--directory'
and '--no-target-directory' options are not specified by POSIX, and the
'link' command is more portable in practice.
If FILENAME is a symbolic link, it is unspecified whether LINKNAME
will be a hard link to the symbolic link or to the target of the
symbolic link. Use 'ln -P' or 'ln -L' to specify which behavior is
desired.
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
indicates failure.