How do I symlink all files from one directory to another in bash?
BashSymlinkLnBash Problem Overview
I want to link ( ln -s ) all files that are in /mnt/usr/lib/ into /usr/lib/
There are lots of files, how can it be done quickly? :)
Bash Solutions
Solution 1 - Bash
ln -s /mnt/usr/lib/* /usr/lib/
I guess, this belongs to superuser, though.
Solution 2 - Bash
GNU cp has an option to create symlinks instead of copying.
cp -rs /mnt/usr/lib /usr/
Note this is a GNU extension not found in POSIX cp.
Solution 3 - Bash
ln -s /mnt/usr/lib/* /usr/lib/
Solution 4 - Bash
The posted solutions will not link any hidden files. To include them, try this:
cd /usr/lib
find /mnt/usr/lib -maxdepth 1 -print "%P\n" | while read file; do ln -s "/mnt/usr/lib/$file" "$file"; done
If you should happen to want to recursively create the directories and only link files (so that if you create a file within a directory, it really is in /usr/lib not /mnt/usr/lib), you could do this:
cd /usr/lib
find /mnt/usr/lib -mindepth 1 -depth -type d -printf "%P\n" | while read dir; do mkdir -p "$dir"; done
find /mnt/usr/lib -type f -printf "%P\n" | while read file; do ln -s "/mnt/usr/lib/$file" "$file"; done