Creating hard and soft links using PowerShell

Solution 1:

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:

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Solution 2:

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.

Solution 3:

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.

Solution 4:

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).

Solution 5:

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"
}