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><A
NAME="SYSLINKS"
>Symbolic links</A
></H1
><P
>      In addition to regular files, UNIX also has special files
      called <I
CLASS="EMPHASIS"
>symbolic links</I
> (or
      <I
CLASS="EMPHASIS"
>symlinks</I
> for short). These files do not
      contain any data; instead, they are just "pointers," or
      "shortcuts" to other files. For example, sasha can have a
      symlink named <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>ft.txt</TT
> pointing to the file
      <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>papers/fieldtheory.txt</TT
>; this way, when a
      program tries to access the file <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>ft.txt</TT
>,
      the file <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>papers/fieldtheory.txt</TT
> will be
      opened instead. As you can see from this example, the symlink
      and the target file can have different names and be located in
      different directories.
    </P
><P
> Note that deleting, moving, or renaming the symlink file
      has no effect on the target file: if sasha tries to delete the
      file <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>ft.txt</TT
>, it is the symlink that will
      be deleted, and the file
      <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>papers/fieldtheory.txt</TT
> will remain
      unchanged.  Also, the permissions of the symlink are
      meaningless: it is the permissions of the target file that
      determine whether a user has the access to it.
    </P
><P
> Symlinks can also point to directories.  For example, on
      the GNOME FTP server (<SPAN
CLASS="SYSTEMITEM"
>ftp.gnome.org</SPAN
>),
      there is a file <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/pub/GNOME/latest</TT
>, which at
      the time of this writing is a symlink to directory
      <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/pub/GNOME/gnome-1.0.53</TT
>. By the time you
      read this, the latest version of GNOME is likely to change, and
      the GNOME maintainers will change the symlink correspondingly,
      so that it will point to
      <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>/pub/GNOME/gnome-1.2</TT
> or something similar.
    </P
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