3

It's possible that making a symbolic link is not at all comparable to making an alias. But from what I understand about symbolic links so far, they do the same thing as setting an alias: they define a new command that you can enter into your terminal to execute something with a different name

When should you make an alias and when should you make a symbolic link?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

The big practical difference is:

  • aliases are defined in your profile scripts, they are usually specific to you and they only work in the shell.
  • When an executable is linked to a new name in a bin directory then it's a system command available to all processes and users

Detail

An alias can include options and arguments, letting you set your preferred default options for a command:

alias ll='ls -l'

and has nothing to do with files.

A symbolic link creates an entry in the file system that refers to some other file in the file system:

link -s ~/somedirectory/mydoc.txt ~/someotherdirectory

will create a link in someotherdirectory to mydoc.txt

However.

If a link is used for an executable file then it can give a new name for a command, just as alias can. For instance on my system ls -l /usr/bin/vi says

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     3B 19 Nov  2019 /usr/bin/vi -> vim

So now vi is an executable command that is identical to vim. Similarly, many systems have both python2 & python3 installed, and then python will be symlink to one of them.

Improve this answer
4
  • Thank you! I've never thought about this before, but what significance does making a symbolic link to a non-executable have? In terms of your example, what purpose would a link to mydoc.txt in someotherdirectory serve?
    – James Ronald
    Aug 11, 2020 at 0:12
  • 1
    @JamesRonald It would useful if there was a script or an application that was set to write to a file that's in a certain directory. For example, there can be a script with many lines that write to /new_data/chemistry/experiments/type_1 but if the file is moved elsewhere such as /new_data/chemistry_1/experiments/type_1, and one doesn't want to alter the script, then one can create a symbolic link in the old directory that points to the file in the new directory.
    – Nasir Riley
    Aug 11, 2020 at 0:39
  • 1
    @JamesRonald Debian-based Linux systems also use symlinks extensively for the "alternatives" mechanism.
    – AdminBee
    Aug 11, 2020 at 6:46
  • @NasirRiley That is crazy useful, thanks so much!
    – James Ronald
    Aug 11, 2020 at 21:17

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .