HP 3000 Manuals

New Features of MPE/iX: Using the Hierarchical File System

Using Symbolic Links 

Symbolic links are permanent MPE/iX files that can be created, removed,
and renamed.

Creating symbolic links 

You can use the NEWLINK command to create a symbolic link to a file,
group, account, root, or another directory.  Suppose that you log on as
follows:

     :hello dmarcon, engineer.develop, pxgroup 

You can create a symbolic link SYMLN and associate it with the target
file TAXINFO.FEB92.PAYROLL as follows:

     :newlink symln, taxinfo.feb92.payroll 

or

     :newlink ./SYMLN, /PAYROLL/FEB92/TAXINFO 

This creates a file called SYMLN under group PXGROUP of account DEVELOP.
Assuming that you (that is, dmarcon) have the appropriate access to the
target file (i.e., taxinfo), you can use the PRINT command to examine the
contents of the target file as follows:

     :print symln 

instead of

     :print taxinfo.FEB92.payroll 

Deleting symbolic links 

You can use the PURGELINK command to remove a symbolic link.  This
command takes the name of the symbolic link and deletes it without
affecting the target of that link.  For example, if you (that is,
dmarcon) wanted to remove the symbolic link SYMLN, you would do the
following:

     :purgelink symln 

or

     :purgelink ./SYMLN 

Renaming symbolic links 

Symbolic links can be renamed by calling the POSIX C-library function of
rename().

The MPE/iX command RENAME does not rename the symbolic link itself, but
the file pointed to by the symbolic link.

Archiving symbolic links 

Symbolic links can be stored and restored to your MPE/iX system by using
the MPE/iX STORE and RESTORE commands like any other file on the system.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation