Why are my links going in the wrong place?

[Colin Law]

On 28 December 2010 15:26, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> For some reason it seems that symbolic links are being created in the
> target directory, instead of the current directory. Why? What am I
> doing wrong?
>
> For instance, I am in a directory with a single subdirectory, in which
> there exists a single file:
> ✈ecd:test$ ls -l
> total 0
> drwxr-xr-x 2 dotancohen dotancohen 16 2010-12-28 17:14 target
> ✈ecd:test$ ls -l target/
> total 4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dotancohen dotancohen 15 2010-12-28 17:14 file
>
> Now I create a symbolic link in the current directory to the subdirectory:
> ✈ecd:test$ ln -s link target/
>
> But it gets placed in the subdirectory instead of in the current directory:
> ✈ecd:test$ ls -l
> total 0
> drwxr-xr-x 2 dotancohen dotancohen 24 2010-12-28 17:15 target
> ✈ecd:test$ ls -l target/
> total 4
> -rw-r--r-- 1 dotancohen dotancohen 15 2010-12-28 17:14 file
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 dotancohen dotancohen  4 2010-12-28 17:15 link -> link
>
> Even when I explicitly state "current directory" the system tries to
> put the link in the subdirectory (the target directory):
> ✈ecd:test$ ln -s ./link target/
> ln: creating symbolic link `target/link': File exists
> ✈ecd:test$
>
> Why? What am I doing wrong?

I think if you look at man ln you will see that it is doing what you are asking

SYNOPSIS
       ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME   (1st form)
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET                  (2nd form)
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY     (3rd form)
       ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...  (4th form)

DESCRIPTION
       In the 1st form, create a link to TARGET with the name
LINK_NAME.  In the 2nd form, create a link to TARGET in
       the current directory.  In the 3rd and 4th forms, create links
to each TARGET in DIRECTORY.  Create hard links
       by default, symbolic links with --symbolic.  When creating hard
links, each TARGET must exist.  Symbolic links
       can hold arbitrary text; if later resolved, a relative link is
interpreted in relation to  its  parent  direc‐
       tory.

You are using the 3rd form so it puts a link to TARGET in DIRECTORY.
I think maybe you want the params the other way around.

Colin