I want to move a directory with a bunch of subdirectories and files. But I have the feeling there might be some symlinks to a few of them elsewhere on the file system. (As in the directory contains the targets of symlinks.)

How do I search all files for symlinks pointing to them?

Some combination of find, stat, ls, realpath, readlink and maybe xargs? I can’t quite figure it out.

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    I think it’s easier the other way round, find all symlinks and grep the directory you want to move from results.

    Something like ‘find /home/user -type -l -exec ls -l {} ; | grep yourdirectory’ and work from there. I don’t think there’s an easy way to list which symlinks point to any actual file.

    • mina86@lemmy.wtf
      1·
      4 days ago

      You want readlink -f rather than ls -l. OK, actually not exactly. readlink won’t print path to the symlink so it’s not as straightforward.

      Also, you want + in find ... -exec ... + rather than ;.