link and unlink

link and unlink are the bare, single-purpose versions of two operations that ln and rm also perform. Each does exactly one thing, takes exactly its operands, and has no options. They exist for scripts that want one precise operation with no surrounding behaviour — no prompting, no link kinds to choose, no recursion.

link #

link file1 file2

link creates one hard link: a new name, file2, for the existing file file1. file1 must exist; file2 must not.

$ link data.csv data-archive.csv

That is the whole command. It performs the link operation directly and reports whether it succeeded. For anything more — symbolic links, replacing an existing destination, linking into a directory — use ln.

unlink #

unlink file

unlink removes one file: it deletes the directory entry file. It takes a single name and removes it directly.

$ unlink stale.lock

unlink does not prompt, does not recurse, and does not remove directories. For removing several files, removing directories, or any of the safety prompts, use rm.

Why they exist #

ln and rm are the commands to use day to day — they are flexible and have the safety behaviours. link and unlink are deliberately rigid: a script that calls unlink will only ever remove a single file, and a reviewer can see that at a glance. The narrowness is the feature.

Exit status #

Both commands: