Merge branch 'develop' of https://zdv2.bktei.com/gitweb/BK-2020-03 into develop

[BK-2020-03.git] / doc / user / rmsym.org

* rmsym - Symlink deleter
#+TITLE: rmsym - Symlink deleter
#+AUTHOR: Steven Baltakatei Sandoval
#+DATE:2023-02-20
#+EMAIL:baltakatei@gmail.com
#+LANGUAGE: en
#+OPTIONS: toc:nil

Created by [[https://baltakatei.com][Steven Baltakatei Sandoval]] on
2023-02-20T18:43+00
under a [[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/][CC BY-SA 4.0]] (🅭🅯🄎4.0) license and last updated on
2023-02-20T18:43+00

** Summary
~rmsym~ is a Bash script which deletes symbolic links specified by
positional arguments.

** Versions
| Version | Description                                                    |
|---------+----------------------------------------------------------------|
|   0.0.1 | Initial version. Does not accept or pass on arguments to ~rm~. |
|         |                                                                |

** Background
I needed a script that would let me quickly delete only symlinks if I
were to provide it with a mix of paths of files, directories, or
symlinks; specifically, I want to be able to create music playlists
that any music player can parse; most music players can recursively
scan directories and a directory tree of symlinks would reduce the
need to maintain multiple copies of music files on the same file
system. However, in order to assure myself that when I prune symlinks
that I don't delete actual files targeted by the symlinks, I need a
program that will only delete symlinks.

Bash supports testing whether a path is a symlink or not via the ~-h~
test. For example, here is a simple Bash script that will report
whether a symlink is present at ~$HOME/foo.txt~ or not.

#+begin_example
#!/bin/bash
path_myfile="$HOME/foo.txt";
if [[ -h "$path_myfile" ]]; then
  echo "STATUS:Is a symlink:$path_myfile";
else
  echo "STATUS:Is not a symlink:$path_myfile";
fi;
#+end_example

** Reference
- "Bash Reference Manual", Section: "[[https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Bash-Conditional-Expressions][6.4 Bash Conditional Expressions]]". gnu.org.