Symbolic Links are used in Linux (and UNIX I guess) to point to a file or directory from within another directory. Like a shortcut in Windows.
When developing on my new Linux box, especially when SSH’d in, I need symbolic links, for example to restart apache quickly or point to put a pointer in my public_html directory pointing to my drupal install that’s somewhere else.
Although my setup doesn’t involve multiple filesystems yet, these links can even go across filesystems to run programs on other mounts.
Before making a link, to restart apache I’d have to run this
After making a new link called apache in my bin dir like this
I can now restart apache using this
Ooooo so many keystrokes saved, eh? Ok I admit it, I just wanted to play with the terminal plugin for http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-syntax/
Amazing indeed
