symlink via command line

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2013-12-01 at 21:42 -0600, Wade Smart wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Jared Greenwald
> Im working with a guy who has a raspberry pi
> for a project and he wants to shortcut to a
> app. Didnt realize couldnt do that.

Sure you can! Almost nothing is impossible. The right answer does depend
a lot on what you mean by "shortcut".

If you want an app to run on a click, you put an icon on the desktop and
run the app through that. "man gnome-desktop-item-edit"

If you want the app in a menu, use the menu editor and add the app into
the menu structure. Run "alacarte".

If you want the app to have another name, add a symlink as your
surmised, but you can't put arguments (parameters) in the symlink. To
have "fred" run "mary" do "sudo ln -s /usr/bin/fred /usr/bin/mary". Be
warned that some program behave differently when named differently!

If you want the app to have another name and have particular parameters,
create a script that runs the program with the desired parameters, then
just run the script. and of course you can run the script via an icon on
the desktop too :-)

   sudo bash
   cat > /usr/bin/mary
   #!/bin/sh
   # Run "fred -p -q -z --footle"
   /usr/bin/fred -p -q -z --footle
   ^D
   chmod u+x /usr/bin/mary
   exit

If you want a pure command line solution, use "alias" to give your
command a new name, but this will only work in the one user's shell.
Other users will have to set up the same alias themselves - though there
are usually global .profile-style files so you can give all users the
same settings, environment, aliases and so on. "man bash" and look for
"ALIASES" and "FUNCTIONS". You'll need functions for anything
complicated, though simple stuff works:

   alias fred="ls -la"

Some shells don't support aliases.

So - what EXACTLY do you want to achieve? Describe the desired situation
so people can help. If you leap to the conclusion that "what I need is a
shortcut" it just confuses people.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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