Why doesn't ln -s prompt that it fails when creating a symlink to an existing symlinked directory?

Question

When running (on linux different ubuntu variations):

>ln -s dir_1 symlink_dir
>ln -s dir_2 symlink_dir

It fails without telling that it fails. But if you do the same thing on a file instead or, add v to the option it does tell you that it fails:

>ln -s file_1 symlinkg_file
>ln -s file_2 symlinkg_file

or

>ln -sv dir_1 symlink_dir
>ln -sv dir_2 symlink_dir

It fails with the error msg:

ln: failed to create symbolic link

For me this seems to be a very strange behaviour? Is there a reason for this?

Answer 1

It does not actually fail. It creates your link inside the given directory:

% mkdir dir_1 dir_2
% ln -s dir_1 symlink_dir
% ln -s dir_2 symlink_dir
% ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 user group 60 Oct 16 12:47 dir_1
drwxr-xr-x 2 user group 40 Oct 16 12:47 dir_2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group  5 Oct 16 12:47 symlink_dir -> dir_1
% ls -l dir_1
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group  5 Oct 16 12:47 dir_2 -> dir_2

This behaviour is described in the manpage:

 ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY     (3rd form)
 ...
 In the 3rd and 4th forms, create links to each TARGET in DIRECTORY.

However, this link fails to link back to dir_2 as it is not set properly. This is also expected behaviour though, and not meant to fail. From the manpage:

Symbolic links can hold arbitrary text; if later resolved, a relative link is interpreted in relation to its parent directory.

By the way, it works the same way for me even with -sv. Maybe you are using a different implementation of ln. Are you sure you are not using -T? Maybe that is set in your ~/.bashrc/~/.zshrc/etc. Try which ln.