Does ln -s require you to be in a certain directory?

Question

I want to create a simple symlink to a file.

It works perfectly if I run the command from inside the directory where I want the symlink to be created:

/path/to/link $ ln -s /path/to/file .

But if I'm in any other directory, it creates a broken link every time:

/any/other/path $ ln -s /path/to/file /path/to/link

Does ln -s require to you to be in a certain directory, or am I missing something? Running Ubuntu 10.04.

Update: Sorry for the confusion about whether the paths were relative or absolute. They were relative, and as several mentioned in their answers this was the source of my problem. Thanks!

Solution 1

If you are not in the same directory as the target you must make sure you use the absolute path.

ln -s foo/bar baz/quux # fails

ln -s ~/foo/bar baz/quux # succeeds

Solution 2

I tend to use

ln -s $(pwd)/local_file /path/to/link

when I need to link a local file.

Solution 3

This is always unintutive to me. I get in the habit of doing:

ln -s $(readlink -f /path/to/file) /path/to/link

which should work but at the cost of making it non-relative in the actual on-disk link.

Comments

[Matthew Flaschen]

It's a bad example, but I'm sure in the real one /path/to/file is relative.

[Croad Langshan]

Sufficiently recent GNU coreutils has an -e flag to coreutils that errors if the target does not exist -- I use that in place of -f. I also find ln confusing, and tend to use the -T flag also.

[Matthew Flaschen]

@CroadLangshan, thanks. I wasn't aware of that readlink option.