A symbolic link is a special kind of file that points to another file. It is a directory entry that associates a filename with a text string that is interpreted as a POSIX pathname when accessed by certain services. A symbolic link is implemented on OpenVMS systems as a file of organization SPECIAL and type SYMBOLIC_LINK. The symlink function creates a symbolic link (link_name) containing the specified contents (link_contents). No attempt is made at link creation time to interpret the symbolic link contents. See also readlink, unlink, realpath, lchown, and lstat.