Creating hard and soft links using PowerShell

Question

Windows 10 (and Powershell 5.0 in general) allows you to create symbolic links via the New-Item cmdlet.

Usage:

New-Item -Path C:\LinkDir -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value F:\RealDir

Or in your profile:

function make-link ($target, $link) {
    New-Item -Path $link -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value $target
}

Turn on Developer Mode to not require admin privileges when making links with New-Item:

You can call the mklink provided by cmd, from PowerShell to make symbolic links:

cmd /c mklink c:\path\to\symlink c:\target\file

You must pass /d to mklink if the target is a directory.

cmd /c mklink /d c:\path\to\symlink c:\target\directory

For hard links, I suggest something like Sysinternals Junction.

Add "pscx" module

No, it isn't built into PowerShell. And the mklink utility cannot be called on its own on Windows Vista/Windows 7 because it is built directly into cmd.exe as an "internal command".

You can use the PowerShell Community Extensions (free). There are several cmdlets for reparse points of various types:

• New-HardLink,
• New-SymLink,
• New-Junction,
• Remove-ReparsePoint
• and others.

In Windows 7, the command is

fsutil hardlink create new-file existing-file

PowerShell finds it without the full path (c:\Windows\system32) or extension (.exe).

New-Symlink:

Function New-SymLink ($link, $target)
{
    if (test-path -pathtype container $target)
    {
        $command = "cmd /c mklink /d"
    }
    else
    {
        $command = "cmd /c mklink"
    }

    invoke-expression "$command $link $target"
}

Remove-Symlink:

Function Remove-SymLink ($link)
{
    if (test-path -pathtype container $link)
    {
        $command = "cmd /c rmdir"
    }
    else
    {
        $command = "cmd /c del"
    }

    invoke-expression "$command $link"
}

Usage:

New-Symlink "c:\foo\bar" "c:\foo\baz"
Remove-Symlink "c:\foo\bar"

Try junction.exe

The Junction command line utility from SysInternals makes creating and deleting junctions easy.

Further reading

• MS Terminology: soft != symbolic
  Microsoft uses "soft link" as another name for "junction".
  However: a "symbolic link" is something else entirely.
  See MSDN: Hard Links and Junctions in Windows.
  (This is in direct contradiction to the general usage of those terms where "soft link" and "symbolic link" ("symlink") DO mean the same thing.)

You can use this utility:

c:\Windows\system32\fsutil.exe create hardlink