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LINK (2)

make a new name for a file

SYNOPSIS

    #include <unistd.h> int link(const char * oldpath , const char * newpath );

DESCRIPTION

    link creates a new link (also known as a hard link) to an existing file.

    If newpath exists it will not be overwritten.

    This new name may be used exactly as the old one for any operation; both names refer to the same file (and so have the same permissions and ownership) and it is impossible to tell which name was the `original'.

RETURN VALUE

    On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

    EXDEV

      oldpath and newpath are not on the same filesystem.

    EPERM

      The filesystem containing oldpath and newpath does not support the creation of hard links.

    EFAULT

      oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.

    EACCES

      Write access to the directory containing newpath is not allowed for the process's effective uid, or one of the directories in oldpath or newpath did not allow search (execute) permission.

    ENAMETOOLONG

      oldpath or newpath was too long.

    ENOENT

      A directory component in oldpath or newpath does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.

    ENOTDIR

      A component used as a directory in oldpath or newpath is not, in fact, a directory.

    ENOMEM

      Insufficient kernel memory was available.

    EROFS

      The file is on a read-only filesystem.

    EEXIST

      newpath already exists.

    EMLINK

      The file referred to by oldpath already has the maximum number of links to it.

    ELOOP

      Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving oldpath or newpath .

    ENOSPC

      The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry.

    EPERM

      oldpath is a directory.

    EIO

      An I/O error occurred.

NOTES

    Hard links, as created by link , cannot span filesystems. Use symlink if this is required.

CONFORMING TO

    SVr4, SVID, POSIX, BSD 4.3, X/OPEN. SVr4 documents additional ENOLINK and EMULTIHOP error conditions; POSIX.1 does not document ELOOP. X/OPEN does not document EFAULT, ENOMEM or EIO.

BUGS

    On NFS file systems, the return code may be wrong in case the NFS server performs the link creation and dies before it can say so. Use stat (2) to find out if the link got created.

SEE ALSO