Ygtjki

I want to create a symbolic link for vi to see this program when calling
from console run vim:

ln -s /usr/bin/vi /usr/bin/vim

ln: failure to create symbolic link «/ usr / bin / vim»: The file already exists

how can I do it so I saw it point to vim

Given your original tag of CentOS, I'll assume that you have an /etc/profile.d/vim.sh file that sets up an alias:

alias vi >/dev/null 2>&1 || alias vi=vim

If you want to run vi when you enter vim, I'd suggest adding to your own ~/.bashrc:

unalias vi
alias vim=vi

Yes, if you already have /usr/bin/vim, you cannot have another file of the same name in that directory. However, /usr/bin is (usually) not the only location checked for executables.

Run echo $PATH to see the list of directories that is checked, left to right. Hopefully, you'll have locations like /home/(username)/bin or /usr/local/bin in there. In that case,

ln -s /usr/bin/vi /usr/local/bin/vim 

will override the default vim for all users. (They can still call /usr/bin/vim to get the original.)

Solution:

You can force to remove the destination file using -f (Test before changing anything!)

ln -sf /usr/bin/vi /usr/bin/vim

Works for me!

Example:

[root@vvek-workstation grep]# ln -ss ./vi ./vim 
ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘./vim’: File exists
[root@vvek-workstation grep]# ln -sf ./vi ./vim 
[root@vvek-workstation grep]# ls -lart
total 0
drwxr-xr-x. 9 root root 228 Mar 20 15:20 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 20 16:00 vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Mar 20 16:00 vim -> ./vi
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 27 Mar 20 16:00 .