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I was browsing a directory on a Linux machine, and when doing a detailed listing I noticed that a link is pointing to itself, for example:
somelink -> /path/to/directory/somelink
I am wondering what is the reason for doing such a thing?
If the
somelinkis in/path/to/directorythen this is an invalid symlink. If you try to access it, the filesystem will give you an error (probably something like too many levels of symbolic links*). It could have been a typo (or some other mistake) when it was created, or the symlink got moved somehow and ended up linking to itself.