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Is there a command in MSYS2 terminal that can be used to determine whether a file is a symbolic link or a windows shortcut .lnk file? For example:

$ touch a.txt
# Create a symbolic link:
$ MSYS=winsymlinks:nativestrict ln -s a.txt b.txt
# Create a .lnk shortcut file:
$ MSYS=winsymlinks ln -s a.txt c.txt
$ ls -l
total 4.0K
-rw-r--r-- 1 hakon hakon 0 Jan 22 20:54 a.txt
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hakon hakon 5 Jan 22 20:54 b.txt -> a.txt
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hakon hakon 5 Jan 22 20:55 c.txt -> a.txt

From the above output, it is not possible to distinguish between the two types of links.

Note: I found that I can use fsutil to check for symbolic links, but then I must know in advance that the file is a symbolic link.

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10
  • I don't know what relationship there is there between .lnk files and bash done in Ming in windows, but a .lnk file would a)have a .lnk extension and b)if you cat it then you'd see .lnk related junk $cat blah.lnk <-- outputs junk from the lnk file.
    – barlop
    Jan 22, 2021 at 20:06
  • @barlop I want to check from the terminal. There the extension is .txt for both types right?
    – Håkon Hægland
    Jan 22, 2021 at 20:08
  • also according to gerrit.googlesource.com/git-repo/+/HEAD/docs/windows.md the nativestrict option thing is to do with whether a file is copied or wheher a symboic link is actually made. Where windows .lnk files come into it I have no idea
    – barlop
    Jan 22, 2021 at 20:08
  • a file would have the same extension whether looking from the terminal or not looking from the terminal (do ensure windows GUI is set to not hide file extensions!)
    – barlop
    Jan 22, 2021 at 20:09
  • @barlop You can see from the output in my question when I type ls -l it shows only .txt files
    – Håkon Hægland
    Jan 22, 2021 at 20:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You may use the free Nirsoft utility NTFSLinksView:

enter image description here

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  • Thanks, is there a way I can avoid the gui and use it as command line query tool?
    – Håkon Hægland
    Jan 22, 2021 at 21:02
  • It has command-line parameters for creating a text file.
    – harrymc
    Jan 22, 2021 at 21:06

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