Is there any standardisation issue between /dev/pts/N and /Dev/ptsN?

@Biswapriyo Device names may be standardised within Linux possibly (I don't know), but there is no standard regarding these on Unix as a whole. On what system do you have a capitalised /Dev directory?

Oh that was typo 😛. I mean the last part of that path.

@Biswapriyo There appears to be no standard naming convention used for device files on Linux (which I presume you are using): refspecs.linuxbase.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch03s06.html

Also: refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_5.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/…

@Biswapriyo It sounds to me you have either /dev/ptsX or /dev/pts/X not both.

@Archemar I have the /dev/pts/N. I have read some old articles & book and saw the confusion.

Could someone confirm that the . is the source in ln -s some/dir . ?

meaning ln -s some/dir [source] is the same as ln -s some/dir .

@Sosi Are you trying to create a symbolic link to a directory?

no, between 2 files

well, sorry, I should've changed my example

@Sosi Between two files?

so it should be ln -s some/dir/file [source] and ln -s some/dir/file .

You create a symbolic link to one file.

yes

The syntax is:

ln -s /far/away/file.txt . will like file.txt to local dir (e.g. . )

ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME

From man ln.

that's exactly my case @Archemar

In other words, the actual filename comes first, your desired link name comes second.

But in your example, the [dot] creates a placeholder in the local dir with some name?

I believe . defaults to the existing filename, though I don't see where that is documented.

yes, use ln -s /far/away/file.txt new-name.txt to change local name.

Nope, I don't see that documented anywhere. Is it some standard convention that I'm not aware of?

@FaheemMitha exactly, that's what confused me too

@Archemar Is there some reason . should expand to the filename?

@Sosi I've used it myself, probably numerous times without really thinking about it. But the documentation should document things.

That's the purpose of documentation, after all.

I think compatibility with ln -s /far/away/file.txt local.dir which would create local.dir/file.txt, so if local.dir is . it should behave the same way.

@MichaelHomer The current directory, yes. Oh, so it's using a different form. One sec.

Ok, so it looks like that corresponds to the third form.

ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY

as documented in man ln.

In this case DIRECTORY is the current directory, namely .

Tha man page says:

> In the 3rd and 4th forms, create links to each TARGET in DIRECTORY.

I think that man page would be better with some examples, but there aren't any.

Thanks a lot, I learned something now :)

@Sosi Does that answer your question? The moral is (sort of) read the man page.

But don't necessarily expect to understand it.

order is : 1) ask internet 2) read the fine manual 3) log a call.

ahah yes @FaheemMitha, I understoond. What led me off was that the [source] would always be a file (or whatever would serve as placeholder there). Instead, that is explained as a dir

Oh, and I suppose that in the third and fourth forms, the link name would have to be the same as the original filename, though the man page doesn't explicitly state that.

Though it would not hurt it to.

I know some people complain about verbose documentation, but unless the author is trying to write War and Peace, more is generally better when it comes to technical documentation.

@Archemar Let's swap (1) and (2). And log a call to whom?

are you taking this remark seriously ? come on ...

@Archemar What remark?

order is ....

@Archemar Ok, but I'm still wondering what "log a call" means.

Hello chat!

I think somebody is already handling this, but just to be sure: in the Late Answers review queue I came across this answer, now deleted: unix.stackexchange.com/review/late-answers/302381

It was approximately a link-only answer, but the real issue, to me, is that all the answers from that user (all posted a few hours ago) point to posts on a couple of blogs, likely owned by the same person/organization. Although not (all) link-only answer, they seem to be there only to drive traffic.

@fra-san please flag one of those answers for moderator attention, with the explanation you just gave

@fra-san well spotted! I've edited their recent answers and given them some pointers.

@StephenKitt My sixth sense told me that at least one moderator was aware of that issue already, but I couldn't restrain from writing here to be completely sure :-)

@JeffSchaller Great!

@fra-san I only saw the tip of the iceberg with that one late answer that I deleted as link-only; I didn't go looking at the rest of their answers. Thanks again for being alert!

@fra-san right, I just like to encourage people to flag for mods since that’s the best way to get their attention (in aggregate, mods are more active on their flag queue than in chat, IME)

^^ What he said; it'd be very easy to miss a chat message, while flags go into a queue to be cleared

@StephenKitt And you did the right thing, I'm too timid when it comes to raising a red flag.