How do you Create soft link with ln command in Linux / UNIX?

To make links between files you need to use ln command. A symbolic link (also known as a soft link or symlink) consists of a special type of file that serves as a reference to another file or directory. Unix/Linux like operating systems often uses symbolic links.
Two types of links

There are two types of links

* symbolic links: Refer to a symbolic path indicating the abstract location of another file
* hard links : Refer to the specific location of physical data.

How do I create soft link / symbolic link?

To create a symbolic link in Unix or Linux, at the shell prompt, enter the following command:

For example create softlink for /usr/bin/php as /usr/local/bin/php, enter the following command:

ls -l
Output:

Syntax:

Soft Link

e.g.

This created an ‘apache’ softlink to apache-tomcat directory

To use hard link, just remove the -s option