For most Unix users, symbolic links are obvious and natural — a means to make connections that span file systems and avoid the need to keep duplicates of files in multiple file system locations.

Symbolic links (also called a soft link) are a very important tool to understand in Linux. These are special files that point to other files, similar to shortcuts in Windows or aliases in macOS.

A symlink or "symbolic link" is a Linux file that simply points at another file. If the referenced file is removed, the symlink will remain but not indicate there's a problem until you try to use it.

You wouldn't know it just by looking, but Mac OS X has two types of aliases. The first are the traditional aliases, which work the same way they do in Mac OS 9. The second type are called symbolic ...