为什么在OSX的$ PATH中找不到应用程序中的符号链接？

Question

I've always been a little wobbly on OSX environment variables, but I figured that, so long as /usr/local/bin was in my $PATH , that everything residing in that folder would be usable as a command in the shell.

This doesn't appear to be happening. $ echo $PATH gives me:

/Users/[username]/.nvm/versions/node/v0.12.7/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

My /usr/local/bin folder contains a symlink to an application; let's call it some-application . But typing some-application in the shell yields the classic bash error:

-bash: some-application: command not found

Answer 1

It was a simple mistake on my part. I had created the symlink using a bad link location:

$ ln -s /some/non-existent/location/some-application /usr/local/bin/some-application

There was no error on creating this 'link'. The symlink name was the one used in the bash error, masking the fact that it couldn't find the original location, not the link.

For me, I would have either expected an error to be thrown on creation of the link, or at least for bash to detail which path couldn't be resolved. Something like this:

-bash: /some/non-existent/location/some-application: No such file or directory

Oh well. Case closed.

PS

Any light being shed on why it behaves this way might be helpful to myself and others.