What is the native way to create a shortcut (.LNK file) from the Windows XP command line? [closed]

Question

EDIT!

Sorry to change the question on everyone, but I am really just asking:

How do I create a shortcut (.LNK) file from the command line with as little outside help as possible? I really don't want to run a VBscript or to download a program to do it for me. Is it really that hard?

Thanks to everyone who provided exceptional answers when I didn't really know what I was asking yet!

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The original title of this question was:

Windows equivalent of Unix ln -s for creating shortcuts from the command line?

The original question text of this question was:

On *nix, I can create a symbolic link to a file very easily from the command line using ln -s.

How do I natively create a shortcut to a file using the Windows XP command prompt?

_{Note: This is not the approach I want to take. I want to do it the way Windows does it. I want to do it the right way.}

Answer 1

Windows XP and later has the fsutil command, which can create "hardlinks" to files.

See:

• MSDN: Hard Links and Junctions
• JSI Tip 10153: The Windows XP FSUTIL.EXE HARDLINK CREATE command

Answer 2

XP doesn't have symlinks. On Vista, the command is mklink. Shortcuts are not symlinks.