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maff
Asked: 2010-04-15 09:38:48 +0800 CST

List all symbolic links on a directory

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a short question: is it possible to list all symbolic links onto a directory other than running a find over the whole filesystem?

Background: I have a directory containing a lot of different versions of a library and I'd like to do some cleanup work and delete the versions which weren't used in any projects.

Thanks, Mathias

linux find symlink

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Unfortunately no. All information about a symlink is stored within the symlink itself, therefore it's impossible to find without scanning the entire filesystem.

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  2. You could something like this:

    find /suspected/symlink/locations -type l -exec ls -l {} \; | grep ' SimlinkTargetDirectory'

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  3. ls -F will list everything but will give you a visual indication of what type the files are. Is that useful?

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