Complete guide to symbolic links (symlinks) in windows or Linux

Symbolic Links

The symlinks is the other name of Symbolic links and these are known as advanced shortcuts. The symbolic links can be creating individually to each files or folders and then it will display like they are stored in the folder with the symbolic link although these links only points to their real location.

Here are the types of symbolic links: first one is hard and second one is soft.

Soft symbolic links

The working of soft symbolic links work is same like as works standard shortcut. In which folder the files are stored it will redirected when open a soft link.

Hard symbolic links

On the other hand, the hard symbolic links display the files and folders where these actually exist and your running applications won’t know any different.

Create Symlinks in Any Edition of Windows in Explorer

With the free Link Shell Extension utility you can develop symlinks in all modern versions of windows.  The job that you to done for this is you have to download Visual Studio 2005 application both version, which included with the main requirements and also download the Link Shell Extension itself. It is important to note that download the correct version that must be 32 bit or 64 bit.

After download the application you need to run application and then install the Visual Studio 2005.

After this install the Link Shell Extension utility. During this procedure the taskbar will disappear for a short interval of time but it will display again after some time.

When the procedure is complete then you can create the symbolic links. For which files or folder you wish to create symbolic links browse that folder or file. After this place the mouse pointer on folder of file and then right-click and then select “Pick Link Source” option.

The another method to create the symlinks, on the folder or file place the mouse pointer and right click and select the option “Drop as”, and after this select the type of link that you desire. By doing this it will create the hard link to the file or folder.