Why are my links going in the wrong place?

[Colin Law]

On 29 December 2010 08:55, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 05:07, Cameron Hutchison <lists at xdna.net> wrote:
>> Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>>I just need to remember the reverse-for-me order of
>>>the arguments. No big deal, as it doesn't clobber anything if I get it
>>>wrong.
>>
>> I always get this wrong too. The way I use to remember it is to think in
>> terms of mv(1).
>>
>> e.g.
>> $ mv existing_file new_file
>> $ ln -s existing_file new_file
>>
>> It's similar in that at the end of the command, new_file exists with the
>> contents of existing_file (in a way). Obviously with mv(1),
>> existing_file ceases to exist with that name, but the operations are
>> somewhat similar.
>>
>
> I know, but I'm stuck on:
> $ command from to
> Which works for mv and cp, but not for ln in the sense that I think of
> "from" and "to".

Think of the 'to' as the place that gets written to.  Then cp makes a
copy of 'from' puts it in 'to', ln makes a link and puts in 'to'.

Colin