NAME

       symlinks - symbolic link maintenance utility

SYNOPSIS

       symlinks [ -cdorstv ] dirlist

DESCRIPTION

       symlinks  is  a  useful  utility  for maintainers of FTP sites, CDROMs, and Linux software
       distributions.  It scans directories for symbolic links and lists them  on  stdout,  often
       revealing flaws in the filesystem tree.

       Each link is output with a classification of relative, absolute, dangling, messy, lengthy,
       or other_fs.

       relative links are those expressed as paths relative to the directory in which  the  links
       reside, usually independent of the mount point of the filesystem.

       absolute links are those given as an absolute path from the root directory as indicated by
       a leading slash (/).

       dangling links are those for which the target of the link does not currently exist.   This
       commonly  occurs  for  absolute  links  when  a  filesystem  is  mounted at other than its
       customary mount point (such as when the normal root filesystem is mounted  at  /mnt  after
       booting from alternative media).

       messy  links  are  links which contain unnecessary slashes or dots in the path.  These are
       cleaned up as well when -c is specified.

       lengthy links are links which use "../" more than necessary in the path (eg.   /bin/vi  ->
       ../bin/vim)  These are only detected when -s is specified, and are only cleaned up when -c
       is also specified.

       other_fs are those links whose target currently resides on  a  different  filesystem  from
       where symlinks was run (most useful with -r ).

OPTIONS

       -c     convert  absolute  links  (within  the  same  filesystem)  to relative links.  This
              permits links to maintain their validity regardless of the mount point used for the
              filesystem  --  a desirable setup in most cases.  This option also causes any messy
              links to be cleaned up, and, if -s was also specified, then lengthy links are  also
              shortened.  Links affected by -c are prefixed with changed in the output.

       -d     causes dangling links to be removed.

       -o     fix  links  on  other  filesystems  encountered  while  recursing.  Normally, other
              filesystems encountered are not modified by symlinks.

       -r     recursively operate on subdirectories within the same filesystem.

       -s     causes lengthy links to be detected.

       -t     is used to test for what symlinks would do if -c were specified, but without really
              changing anything.

       -v     show  all  symbolic  links.   By default, relative links are not shown unless -v is
              specified.

BUGS

       symlinks does not recurse or change links across filesystems.

AUTHOR

       symlinks has been written by Mark  Lord  <mlord@pobox.com>,  the  original  developer  and
       maintainer  of  the  IDE  Performance  Package  for linux, the Linux IDE Driver subsystem,
       hdparm, and a current day libata hacker.

SEE ALSO

       symlink(2)