Creating Alias for FILE

UNIX Solaris
1

Hello,

I need the command to create alias for a file "FILE" (NOT for commands) ? And Is there any difference between creating alias for files and creating alias for commands ?

For info, i'm using Solaris 8

Thx,

2

you mean, that if you`ll run

$ cat file_alias

you`ll expect that it will show the content of file, that you`re referring to as file_alias?

you should take a look at

ln -s file alias_to_file

it will create symlink you could refer to

3

Thx for ur reply but let me be more precise.

I have some files : file1, file2, file3, ... fileN in /origin directory. I need to create alias in /tmp directory : alias_file1, alias_file2, ... alias_fileN for all of those existing files.

An other application will fetch on /tmp directory for those existing alias then it will copy the corresponding file from /origin.

i.e : if the application will find alias_file1 created on/tmp, it will copy the file1 from /origin.

I don't care about how this application will check the alias. But i need only to create the alias for those files.

I can not use the symbolic link because later in our process of managment, we have to delete some alias without affecting the origin files. Because I think if we delete symbolic link the corresponding file will be affected !!!

P.S : I need to create the alias because the origin files are so sensitive and not advised to be managed directely.

Thx again,

4

Don't worry. Symbolic links (or any link, for that matter) don't really affect the original file per se. A symbolic link in UNIX is just a directory entry (in your case in /tmp) which tells any process accessing it that the files contents are in /origin.

With hard links both directory entries (the original and the link) become equivalent so that there's no telling which one was there first, as both point to the same inode.

5

Thanks,

I'm still having one question plz :

Does it exist this notion of alias for files like for commands ? In other words, can we create alias for file like for we used to do for command with the famous command :

alias command=cmd ? But for file instead of command ?

Thx,

6

dont forget, that you have to provide path to the file, so symlinks will do the job for you.

also, i dont think that there is an non-tricky and 100% always working way to do such "aliasing" you want implement.

regards,
nik