We are all familiar with keyboard shortcuts. But are you familiar with Symbolic Links or Symbolic Links? Symbolic links work like shortcuts but you can think of them as shortcuts on steroids. A symbolic link represents the original location of a file or folder anywhere on your computer.
Some applications look for files in the default location while all files may be stored elsewhere, such as an external drive, network, or even in the cloud. Instead of moving all your files or making multiple copies, you can simply create a symlink in the default directory. The symbolic link acts as a directional pointer and redirects the application to the original location. Links seem like normal files or folders, and apps are indistinguishable.
Symbolic links have existed since the earliest days of computers. More than history, it’s the productive use you can put them in that captures the mind.
Here are 5 practical applications of Symlinks
- A symbolic link can be created for a document that is accessed by multiple programs. Instead of creating multiple copies, you maintain one copy and create symlinks for each individual program.
- Symbolic links allow you to change the location of the installation files from its default location and basically keep it safe from system crashes.
- Symbolic links allow you to store your media in any other location, but also make them accessible through the media program’s default folder path.
- Symbolic links make it easy to do cloud-based syncing with Dropbox files that aren’t in ‘My Dropbox’.
- Symbolic links are used to ‘hack’ Steam games and store larger games in an external drive.
Creating and using symlinks used to be a command line task – purely for geeks – but now it’s a bit simpler with a free program called Link Shell Extension.
Install and use symlinks
Link Shell Extension and required runtime DLLs can be downloaded from here and installed. The documentation also goes deeper into the details of using symlinks. Here is a summary of how you can use them in Windows. LSE is supported on all versions of Windows with the NTFS file system. (Screen for Windows XP)
Select the folder or file you want to create the symlink from. Right-click the folder or file and select Select Link Source from the context menu.
Now, browse to the folder where you want to save the symlink. Right click on the folder and select Drop as…
Depending on the source of the symlink, the Drop as command may give you several other options. For example, if you select a folder as the link source, you will see the following context menu and options.
Hardlink Clone creates a symlink to a file. Junction creates a symlink to the entire directory. Smart Copy basically makes a copy of the entire directory structure from the source location to the destination. You can choose from one of these options.
This is an introductory guide to symlinks. Symbolic links are advanced shortcuts and there are many other things that can increase your productivity. We will bring it up in a future post.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
