LINK(2) 		   Linux Programmers Manual		      LINK(2)



NAME
       link - make a new name for a file

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       int link(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);

DESCRIPTION
       link()  creates	a  new link (also known as a hard link) to an existing
       file.

       If newpath exists it will not be overwritten.

       This new name may be used exactly as the old  one  for  any  operation;
       both names refer to the same file (and so have the same permissions and
       ownership) and it is impossible to tell which name was the  "original".

RETURN VALUE
       On  success,  zero is returned.	On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EACCES Write access to the directory containing newpath is  denied,  or
	      search  permission  is  denied for one of the directories in the
	      path prefix of  oldpath  or  newpath.   (See  also  path_resolu
	      tion(7).)

       EEXIST newpath already exists.

       EFAULT oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.

       EIO    An I/O error occurred.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving oldpath or
	      newpath.

       EMLINK The  file  referred to by oldpath already has the maximum number
	      of links to it.

       ENAMETOOLONG
	      oldpath or newpath was too long.

       ENOENT A directory component in oldpath or newpath does not exist or is
	      a dangling symbolic link.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
	      entry.

       ENOTDIR
	      A component used as a directory in oldpath or newpath is not, in
	      fact, a directory.

       EPERM  oldpath is a directory.

       EPERM  The  file system containing oldpath and newpath does not support
	      the creation of hard links.

       EROFS  The file is on a read-only file system.

       EXDEV  oldpath and newpath are not on the  same	mounted  file  system.
	      (Linux  permits  a file system to be mounted at multiple points,
	      but link() does not work across different mount points, even  if
	      the same file system is mounted on both.)

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001 (except as noted above).

NOTES
       Hard  links,  as created by link(), cannot span file systems.  Use sym
       link(2) if this is required.

       POSIX.1-2001 says that link() should dereference oldpath  if  it  is  a
       symbolic link.  However, Linux does not do so: if oldpath is a symbolic
       link, then newpath is created as a (hard) link  to  the	same  symbolic
       link  file (i.e., newpath becomes a symbolic link to the same file that
       oldpath refers to).  Some other implementations behave in the same man
       ner as Linux.

BUGS
       On  NFS	file  systems,	the  return  code may be wrong in case the NFS
       server performs the link creation and dies before it can say  so.   Use
       stat(2) to find out if the link got created.

SEE ALSO
       ln(1),  linkat(2),  open(2), rename(2), stat(2), symlink(2), unlink(2),
       path_resolution(7), symlink(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of	the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  2004-06-23			       LINK(2)