Is there a way to create a symlink whose target does not exist using shell scripts?
From reading man 1 ln, I do not see an option to do so; and even -f checks if the target exists.
Is there a way to achieve what I'm looking for?
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When you run
ln -s nonexistenttarget link
ln doesn’t check whether nonexistenttarget exists, it creates the link, unless link already exists. -f works around the last part by deleting link if necessary.
The impact of a non-existent target is only felt when a program tries to dereference the link, e.g. by opening it:
$ ls -l link
lrwxrwxrwx 1 steve steve 17 May 22 08:44 link -> nonexistenttarget
$ cat link
cat: link: No such file or directory
answered May 22 at 6:45
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I once saw a script here somewhere (can't find it now) that created symbolic links that contained the text of a shell script, by mistake (wrong variable used in
ln -scommand). – Kusalananda♦ May 22 at 7:02
