Does Windows Have the Ln -S or Equivalent?

I need to link a file to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

How can I do that with Windows ? Is there a soft link such as ln -s or equivalent in Windows ?

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7 Answers

You are looking for the command "mklink".

Documentation and examples in Microsoft Docs or ss64.com.

Example taken from the link:

// To create a symbolic link named MyDocs from the root directory to the \Users\User1\Documents directory, type:
mklink /d \MyDocs \Users\User1\Documents
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There may be other ways, but the one I'm familiar with is mklink:

C:\>mklink 
Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

        /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
                symbolic link.
        /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
        /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
        Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
        Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
                refers to.

There are junctions but I don't know if this will do exactly what you need.

edit - oops sorry, junction only applies to directories not files

Powershell

As long as Microsoft advices to use as a command interpreter since more than 5 years ago and cmd.exe is becoming a legacy application this question lacks an answer in Powershell:

New-Item -path ~\Desktop\hosts -itemType SymbolicLink -target c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

This works as of Powershell v5.0

As @inf says, mklink is the solution for Vista and above.

For 2000/XP, you can use fsutil hardlink. Note that, unlike mklink, hardlink doesn't work across drives.

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Link Shell Extension can create symbolic link (among other things). Nice context menu integration. Available for the most recent windows versions and frequently updated.

open the Terminal/CMD under the android/sdk/tools,type

Terminal** ln -s emulator64-x86 emulator-x86** CMDmklink emulator64-x86 emulator-x86

this will get created like..

symbolic link created for emulator64-x86 <<===>> emulator-x86

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James H. Sterling

James H. Sterling

Environmental Science & Climate Journalist

James Sterling reports on renewable energy developments, climate policy, ecological conservation, and green tech innovations around the globe.

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