Can PowerShell 1.0 create hard and soft links analogous to the Unix variety?
If this isn't built in, can someone point me to a site that has a ps1 script that mimics this?
This is a necessary function of any good shell, IMHO. :)
New-Item -Type
and press tab to cycle through the options. Hardlink
, SymbolicLink
, and Junction
appear for me. Works Win 10, Server 2016+, or older OS with Powershell 5.0+ installed via Windows Management Framework 5.0+.
New-Item -Type HardLink
nor New-Item -Type SymbolicLink
. New-Item docs link to help about_Providers
, it suggests you read help for each provider (which isn't linked). But if you google it there is plenty of buzz in the PowerShell community around New-Item -Type HardLink
. It looks like the PowerShell engineering team has come up with provider extension points that stump the docs team.
WARNING!
-- While it is very easy to create hardlinks, it may be quite a challenge to remove them securely. That is because the tools are not easily available in native Powershell while Windows like to lock file access and keep files in memory (thus not always removable without a reboot.) Please see my post here.
Windows 10 (and Powershell 5.0 in general) allows you to create symbolic links via the New-Item cmdlet.
Usage:
New-Item -Path C:\LinkDir -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value F:\RealDir
Or in your profile:
function make-link ($target, $link) {
New-Item -Path $link -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value $target
}
Turn on Developer Mode to not require admin privileges when making links with New-Item
:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/1HYya.png
You can call the mklink
provided by cmd
, from PowerShell to make symbolic links:
cmd /c mklink c:\path\to\symlink c:\target\file
You must pass /d
to mklink
if the target is a directory.
cmd /c mklink /d c:\path\to\symlink c:\target\directory
For hard links, I suggest something like Sysinternals Junction.
function mklink { cmd /c mklink $args }
New-Item
does detect if the target is a directory, but New-Item
will fail if the target does not exist whereas mklink will create the symbolic link regardless.
Add "pscx" module
No, it isn't built into PowerShell. And the mklink
utility cannot be called on its own on Windows Vista/Windows 7 because it is built directly into cmd.exe
as an "internal command".
You can use the PowerShell Community Extensions (free). There are several cmdlets for reparse points of various types:
New-HardLink,
New-SymLink,
New-Junction,
Remove-ReparsePoint
and others.
New-Item -Type
and press tab to cycle through the options. Hardlink
, SymbolicLink
, and Junction
appear for me. Works Win 10, Server 2016+, or older OS with Powershell 5.0 installed via Windows Management Framework 5.0+.
In Windows 7, the command is
fsutil hardlink create new-file existing-file
PowerShell finds it without the full path (c:\Windows\system32) or extension (.exe).
fsutil hardlink
requires new-file
and existing-file
to be on the same drive. If that matters to you, use cmd's mklink /c
instead.
fsutil
(or Windows for that matter)
New-Symlink:
Function New-SymLink ($link, $target)
{
if (test-path -pathtype container $target)
{
$command = "cmd /c mklink /d"
}
else
{
$command = "cmd /c mklink"
}
invoke-expression "$command $link $target"
}
Remove-Symlink:
Function Remove-SymLink ($link)
{
if (test-path -pathtype container $link)
{
$command = "cmd /c rmdir"
}
else
{
$command = "cmd /c del"
}
invoke-expression "$command $link"
}
Usage:
New-Symlink "c:\foo\bar" "c:\foo\baz"
Remove-Symlink "c:\foo\bar"
New-Item -Type
and press tab to cycle through the options. Hardlink
, SymbolicLink
, and Junction
appear for me. Works Win 10, Server 2016+, or older OS with Powershell 5.0 installed via Windows Management Framework 5.0+.
Try junction.exe
The Junction command line utility from SysInternals makes creating and deleting junctions easy.
Further reading
MS Terminology: soft != symbolic Microsoft uses "soft link" as another name for "junction". However: a "symbolic link" is something else entirely. See MSDN: Hard Links and Junctions in Windows. (This is in direct contradiction to the general usage of those terms where "soft link" and "symbolic link" ("symlink") DO mean the same thing.)
mklink
which is shipped with Windows. If you have a Windows version which it is shipped with.
I combined two answers (@bviktor and @jocassid). It was tested on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012.
function New-SymLink ($link, $target)
{
if ($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major -ge 5)
{
New-Item -Path $link -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value $target
}
else
{
$command = "cmd /c mklink /d"
invoke-expression "$command ""$link"" ""$target"""
}
}
You can use this utility:
c:\Windows\system32\fsutil.exe create hardlink
I wrote a PowerShell module that has native wrappers for MKLINK. https://gist.github.com/2891103
Includes functions for:
New-Symlink
New-HardLink
New-Junction
Captures the MKLINK output and throws proper PowerShell errors when necessary.
Actually, the Sysinternals junction
command only works with directories (don't ask me why), so it can't hardlink files. I would go with cmd /c mklink
for soft links (I can't figure why it's not supported directly by PowerShell), or fsutil
for hardlinks.
If you need it to work on Windows XP, I do not know of anything other than Sysinternals junction
, so you might be limited to directories.
I found this the simple way without external help. Yes, it uses an archaic DOS command but it works, it's easy, and it's clear.
$target = cmd /c dir /a:l | ? { $_ -match "mySymLink \[.*\]$" } | % `
{
$_.Split([char[]] @( '[', ']' ), [StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries)[1]
}
This uses the DOS dir command to find all entries with the symbolic link attribute, filters on the specific link name followed by target "[]" brackets, and for each - presumably one - extracts just the target string.
Success story sharing
New-Item
commandlet.-ItemType
ofHardLink
for a file andJunction
for a directory. These do not require developer mode or admin privileges.