[Semibug] Why does Linux do this?

[Carl T. Miller]

That allows you to have several different replacements
for vi installed concurrently, and easy switch between
them using the update-alternatives command.

c


On 5/29/23 08:43 PM, Jonathan Drews wrote:
> 5.4.0-149-generic #166-Ubuntu SMP Tue Apr 18 16:51:45 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> I wanted to find out where vi was so I do:
> cleetus at cleetus-ThinkPad-T480s:~$ whereis vi
> vi: /usr/bin/vi /usr/share/man/man1/vi.1.gz
> cleetus at cleetus-ThinkPad-T480s:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/vi
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Mar 11  2022 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi
> cleetus at cleetus-ThinkPad-T480s:~$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/vi
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Mar 11  2022 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim.tiny
> cleetus at cleetus-ThinkPad-T480s:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/vim.tiny
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1353944 Apr 18 04:20 /usr/bin/vim.tiny
>
>
> My question: What is the purpose of the multiple symlinks?
>
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