Section 13.12. Working with Links

13.12. Working with Links

Unix links come in two types: hard links , which are files, and symlinks (also known as soft links), which are pointers to other files. The difference is crucial: if you delete a hard link, you delete the file (unless there are other hard links pointing to the same file), whereas if you delete a symlink, the original file remains untouched.

You can create hard links and symlinks in PHP using the link( ) and symlink( ) functions, both of which take a target and a link name as their only two parameters and return true if they were successful or false otherwise. For example:

     $result = link("/home/paul/myfile.txt", "/home/andrew/myfile.txt");     if (!$result) {             echo "Hard link could not be created!\n";     } else {             $result = symlink("/home/paul/myfile.txt", "/home/andrew/myfile.txt");             if (!$result) {                     echo "Symlink could not be created either!\n";             }     } 

PHP also gives you the readlink( ) function that takes a link name as its only parameter and returns the target that the link points to. For example:

     $target = readlink("/home/andrew/myfile.txt");     print $target;     // prints /home/paul/myfile.txt