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I would like to get automator to mount a volume in a shared SMB server and get all subfolders symlinked within my Documents folder.

I thought I could do that easily by creating Finder's so called aliases but it turned out they are not symbolic links and some applications like Picasa fail to explore these subfolders.

How can I get Automator to create symbolic links instead of aliases for my folders?

bmike
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Antonio Pérez
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    (Please note that an anaswer to your first question could have easily been found by googling "symbolic link vs alias" and many answers, videos, and downloads can be found for your second question by googling "symlink automator") – lemonginger Sep 15 '11 at 19:35
  • why not split these up - the best answer to b) might not have a good a) answer. You can put them together in your mind later :-) I'll see if a) is already answered here with some great tips. – bmike Sep 15 '11 at 19:53
  • http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/2991/whats-the-difference-between-alias-and-link should take care of the a) part of this question... – bmike Sep 15 '11 at 19:55
  • @bmike: thanks, for the other question link. I swear it didn't appeared in the related questions link :) Together with Google first result for "symbolic link vs alias": http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/symbolic-link-vs-alias/ answers a) – Antonio Pérez Sep 15 '11 at 20:42
  • No worries - It's an art knowing how to search - i just happened to recall the wording else I might have missed it... – bmike Sep 15 '11 at 21:03

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1) The easy answer is that aliases are symbolic links, but ONLY for the Finder. Other applications don't generally use them as such, whereas symlinks act as aliases for the Finder as well but also act as symlinks for any Application. Aliases are actually MUCH better than symlinks for Finder-type uses as then don't break, and you can do things like, for example make an alias to a file inside of a disk image -- if the disk image isn't mounted when you click the alias, FInder will mount the disk image, then open that file.

2) Here is a video that shows you how to create symlinks with automator.

2a) There are also a number of Automator addons that you can use that are made for creating symlinks/

lemonginger
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