How to find given file is a symbolic (soft) link or hard link [duplicate]

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How do you determine using stat() whether a file is a symbolic link? (1 answer)

Closed 8 years ago.

With c code, I want to know the given file (like test.c) is a symbolic link or not. I tried with stat() function. I am checking the

nlink_t   st_nlink;   /* number of hard links */

member of stat structure.

struct stat stbuf;
stat("test.c", &stbuf)

stbuf.st_nlink is giving one in case of hard link as well as in softlink.

Is that i am doing right. Or is there any other way to check the given file is a soft link or hard link.

Answer 1

No, you need to use lstat() to be able to detect if a file is a soft link.

Also make sure that you understand that typically, there are not three different types of files: files, hard links to files, and soft links to files. Instead, there are only two: hard links to files and soft links. What you might think of as "the file" is in fact a hard link too, it's just typically the single link.