Ever get irritated while traversing long paths in the IFS root file system? Create a shortcut to get there faster--and learn a little UNIX to boot.
UNIX practitioners know that the ln -s command generates a symbolic link, a shortcut to a file or file path. On iSeries, the command is available through Qshell. Here's the command syntax:
ln -s ActualFilename LinkFileName ActualFilename is the name of the file that is to be linked to, and LinkFileName is the shortcut's name. Let's take a simple example, using ln –s to shorten the path of a Web server's log folder. The command wrklnk '/www/test/logs' shows us the logs using the original, long folder path (see Figure 1).
 Figure 1: wrklnk '/www/test/logs' displays our Web server log files. Use qsh to launch the Qshell command line:
qsh ln -s creates a symbolic link from /www/test/logs to a shorter path, /tlogs:
ln -s /www/test/logs /tlogs Exit lets us leave the Qshell command line:
exit Now, view the logs again with a much shorter path, /tlogs:
wrklnk '/tlogs'
Success! Figure 2 shows that the shortcut gives the same result as the longer path did in Figure 1.
Figure 2: wrklnk '/tlogs' shows the same files that wrklnk '/www/test/logs' did before.
The root-level shortcut /tlogs can also be viewed from other IFS interfaces, such as iSeries Navigator, as shown in Figure 3.
 Figure 3: These views show the original path, /www/test/logs, and the shortcut path, /tlogs, from iSeries Navigator.
For more information, see the ln command reference.
Alan Seiden is Senior Developer and Technical Lead at Strategic Business Systems, Inc., in Ramsey, New Jersey, where he helps clients reach their business goals using iSeries, Microsoft, and open-source technology, with an emphasis on usability. Alan is an advisory board member of the New York City Usability Professionals Association. Contact Alan at alanseiden@acm.org.
| 
