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Comment by ufo | Hacker News Reader

I wish the order of the arguments of ln were easier to get right. One time I did an ln --force with the arguments in the wrong order and ended up ruining all the files. Had to restore from backup.

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The order of LN arguments is #1 gotcha in my opinion when working in the shell.

I was confusing the order of LN arguments for years until I read a pro tip that they are the same order as CP arguments.

   cp file1 file2

Creates file2 that is a copy of file1.

And now

   ln -s file1 file2

Creates file2 that links to file1.

No more confusion.

Another way to avoid confusion over ln argument order is to use cp itself:

    cp --symbolic-link file1 file2
    cp -s file1 file2

Wow, TIL.

I always used to think ln's argument order was totally counterintuitive too. Then I realised that they might have done it that way to account for the case where you only give one argument. If you use `ln <targetpath>` without a link path, it will make a link in the current directory with the same name as the target file. This way, in both cases, the target is the first argument.

Maybe find a mnemonic? In college, while I paused to remember the order, a friend blurted out "fake things last", and that phrase has stuck with me. I always hesitate a second but never get it wrong now.

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