In OS X how could I create symlinks to everything within a given directory (rather than the directory itself)?

Question

Say I have a bunch of config files that I'd like to store elsewhere, but if I move them and then symlink the directory, the application sees it as a symlink and won't use the contained files.

Instead what I'd like to do is figure out a command that would allow me to batch-create symlinks for all of the files within a given directory. Can this be done?

Answer 1

Just use a wildcard. Like this:

ln -s /path/to/config/files/* /path/to/symlinks/

While you can use a relative path for the destination directory, the directory the link targets are in must be specified with an absolute path.

Note that if there are any directories in the directory with the targets, it will make a symlink to it instead of creating a directory with symlinks inside. If there are too many (if any at all) to work around manually you'd have to write a shell script to accomplish this.