Question

With Bash scripting, is there a way to determine which directory a link is pointing to, then switch it to another directory based on the result?

For example, say I have the two following directories:

/var/data/1/ and /var/data/2/

I have a link to one of them, say, data_link and it is currently linked to /var/data/1/

When the script is triggered, I want it to swap the link to /var/data/2/ (i.e. ln -s /var/data/2/ /somepath/data_link).

When the script is triggered again, the opposite will happen (i.e. ln -s /var/data/1/ /somepath/data_link), and so on. What’s the easiest way to do this via a Bash script?

Answer 1

Use the readlink command to get the content of a link:

$TARGET=$(readlink "$LINK")

Then use standard if to inspect the current value, rm to remove it, and ln as you indicated to re-create with the new desired target.