CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosterminal
barbara
barbara

Reputation: 3201

What does -> mean in OSX?

When I run ls command on MacOS I see the line which contains a -> symbol. I cannot find a way to describe it.

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root             wheel       21 Feb 18  2014 libBSDPClient.dylib -> libBSDPClient.A.dylib

What does it mean? And how can I call it?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 61

Answers (1)

John Zwinck
John Zwinck

Reputation: 249153

The -> in the output of ls indicates a symbolic link (aka soft link). The part on the left is the name of the symlink, and the part on the right is its target. So in your example:

libBSDPClient.dylib -> libBSDPClient.A.dylib

There is a "file" libBSDPClient.dylib which is a link to libBSDPClient.A.dylib (in the same directory, and which may not actually exist).

As for your question about how to "call" it, well, you don't "call" shared objects, but you can "load" them in a running program by the usual mechanisms, such as runtime dynamic linking or explicitly via dlopen().

Upvotes: 2

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