In today’s post, we will be describing how to remove a symbolic link in Linux. Note that removing a symbolic link does not affect the file it points to.
Before removing a file, you can verify whether it is a symbolic link using the ls -l command. It will also show you the file or directory that it points to.
The l in permissions (lrwxrwxrwx) confirms that it’s a symbolic link.
Remove a Symbolic Link using the unlink command
The unlink command is used for removing a single file from the file system. To remove a symbolic link in Linux, type the unlink command followed by the name of the symbolic link and hit Enter:
Replace symbolic_link with the name of the symbolic link you want to remove. After that, you can use the ls -l command to confirm if the symlink has been removed.
Remove a symlink that points to a directory, don’t use the slash after the directory name. Let’ say we want to remove a symbolic link directory named Docs, as shown in the following screenshot:
The command to remove the symlink directory will be:
Remove a Symbolic Link using the rm command
The rm command can also be used to remove a symbolic link. For removing a symbolic link in Linux, type the rm command followed by the name of the symbolic link and hit Enter:
After that, you can use the ls -l command to confirm if the symlink has been removed.
You can also use the -i flag with the rm command to prompt for confirmation.
Removing a symlink that points to a directory, don’t use the slash after the directory name. Let’ say we want to remove a symbolic link directory named Docs, as shown in the following screenshot:
The command to remove the symlink directory will be:
After that, you can use the ls -l command to confirm if the symlink has been removed.
That is all there is to it! You have learned to remove a symbolic link in Linux OS using the unlink and rm command in this post. While removing a symbolic link, make sure only to remove the symbolic link itself, not the file or directory it is linking to.
