Question

I was reading php functions and I came across symlink but I really couldnt grab it specially its usage in real world application developement. Can anybody please explain me with real world example?

Thanks

Answer 1

Let’s assume you have a src folder in your $HOME directory where your sources are stored. When you open a new shell, you usually enter your $HOME directory when the shell was started. It might be a common step that whenever you open up a new shell, you want to enter the directory ~/src/very_long_project_name afterwards.

This is where symlinks come into play: you could create a symlink in your $HOME directory (for example called vlpn that directly points to ~/src/very_long_project_name.

When you open your console next time, you could simply type cd vlpn instead of cd src/very_long_project_name. That’s it. Nothing PHP specific. Like giraff and gnur already said.