symlink confusion

[Jim McGinness]

My mnemonic device is to remember that the first argument is what you want
the symlink to *contain*; the second is the object you want to *create* and
things won't work right if it already exists.

 -- jmcg

On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>
wrote:

> On 11/14/2015 12:36 PM, Kyle Smith wrote:
>
> I like to remember it as:
>
> ln -s thing-I-want-a-symlink-to where-I-want-to-put-it
>
> It's helps to remember, too, the reason for the order is that the second
> option isn't required. It will put a symlink with the same base name in
> your current working directory without it.
> On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 12:31 PM Bruce Labitt <
> bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
>
>> Confused about this, so I'd like to ask, before I mess things up.  I am
>> attempting to follow the instructions on
>>
>> http://askubuntu.com/questions/693145/installing-cuda-7-5-toolkit-on-ubuntu-15-10
>>
>> I'd like to create a symbolic link from cc (which is a symlink) to
>> /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc
>>
>> cc -> /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc
>>
>> So the command should be:  sudo ln -s cc /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc ?  Or
>> reverse the arguments?
>>
>> Sorry about this primitive question, sometimes I get confused about the
>> order.  As I have found online, the description is
>> ln -s /path/to/file path/to/symlink.  However, this still confuses me.
>> Which is which in my example?
>>
>> Can someone enlighten me?  TIA.
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>>
>
> Pardon my denseness (density?), but what you have shown is still confusing
> to me.
>
> ln -s thing-I-want-a-symlink-to where-I-want-to-put-it  <-- I don't
> understand this :(
>
> In my case, I want any reference to cc to point to
> /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc.  It turns out /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc will be a
> symlink as well.  Eventually the cc reference will end up pointing to
> gcc-4.9, since CUDA7.5 does not support gcc5.
>
> Is it
> 1)  ln -s cc /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc      or
> 2)  ln -s /opt/compiler_cuda/gcc cc
>
> Which one does what I want?  Seriously confused.
>
>
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>
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