Creating & Resolving Symlinks

Creating and resolving symlink is a common task. Deno has a number of functions for this task.

First we will create a text file to link to.

await Deno.writeTextFile("example.txt", "hello from symlink!");

Now we can create a soft link to the file

await Deno.symlink("example.txt", "link");

To resolve the path of a symlink, we can use Deno.realPath

console.log(await Deno.realPath("link"));

Symlinks are automatically resolved, so we can just read them like text files

console.log(await Deno.readTextFile("link"));

In certain cases, soft links don't work. In this case we can choose to make "hard links".

await Deno.link("example.txt", "hardlink");
console.log(await Deno.readTextFile("hardlink"));

Run this example locally using the Deno CLI:

deno run --allow-write --allow-read https://docs.deno.com/examples/symlinks.ts

Additional resources: