Monday, April 28, 2014

Soft Linking

Dear Diary,

I have two folders that I want to access the same information.  Like, let's pretend I have a pdf of something totally swanky that I put into one folder.  For my own filing system, I want to have another folder with a different name that accesses the folder with my swanky pdf.

All I have to do is soft link!  By typing

"ln -s [original directory] [new directory]"

the computer makes a folder that if you go into it, you go to the original folder!  This also works with documents!  I just made one for our journal club tomorrow so I don't have to move all the documents over.  I use them all the time if I see two projects need the same thing:  I soft link both to the relevant whatever!

Our little in-house server has a lot of these.  Many times, students have tried to go wandering around and document the directory tree, but few have made it out!  There's so many soft links everywhere that it's turned into a maze rivalling Crete and only now generates headaches!  But no Minotaur (I think...)!

In fact, the streets of Irvine and many foreign countries such as cities in Spain are set up like this.  The idea is that if you have windy streets, then you can get away from bad guys more easily by running until you're lost yourself.

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