Create a symbolic link of directory in Ubuntu

Below is my code for creating a symlink of a directory:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/nginx/conf/ /etc/nginx

I already created the directory /etc/nginx. I just want the contents of the source directory (/usr/local/nginx/conf/) to be in the contents of the target directory (/etc/nginx). But when I execute the code, /etc/nginx contains a directory called conf, instead of the contents of conf. That directory contains the contents I want, but in the wrong location.

Why did it put a directory in the target folder, instead of just putting the contents of the directory in the target folder?

This is the behavior of ln if the second arg is a directory. It places a link to the first arg inside it. If you want /etc/nginx to be the symlink, you should remove that directory first and run that same command.

That's what ln is documented to do when the target already exists and is a directory. If you want /etc/nginx to be a symlink rather than contain a symlink, you had better not create it as a directory first!

In script is useful something like this:

if [ ! -d /etc/nginx ]; then ln -s /usr/local/nginx/conf/ /etc/nginx > /dev/null 2>&1; fi

it prevents before re-create "bad" looped symlink after re-run script