mklink: How do you make a symbolic link to a file in command prompt when the file aready exists?

Question

Coming from a unix-based environment, I expected to be able to create symbolic links in a Windows 7 command prompt using mklink or a similar function. Indeed, I find that I can do this, but if the link already exists, I find I cannot overwrite the link with a 'force' option, as you can in unix with ln -sf.

Is there a way that I can create a symbolic link with the same name and overwrite any existing link, all in one command? I'm surprised that the list of options here doesn't allow this, from what I've seen.

Answer 1

You can use PowerShell to overwrite an existing symlink using the -Force argument:

New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "/existing/symlink/path" -target "/new/target/path" -Force