Playing with Symbolic Link Loops on macOS#

Most of the time, symbolic links (symlinks) are one of the handiest features of Unix-like systems. They let you create shortcuts that act like real files or folders. For example:

1
ln -s /private/tmp ~/tmp

Now ~/tmp works as if it were the real /private/tmp folder. Both Finder and Terminal happily follow the link.

But what happens if you try to get clever — and point a symlink back to itself?

Creating a Symlink Loop#

In my test directory, I created a folder a and then a symlink tmp_a:

1
mkdir a
2
ln -s a tmp_a

At this point, tmp_a correctly pointed to the folder a.

Then I moved things around and re-linked tmp_a… back to itself:

1
mv tmp_a ../
2
ln -s tmp_a tmp_a

Listing the directory now shows:

1
lrwxr-xr-x  1 lishuyu  wheel   Oct  2 18:33 tmp_a -> tmp_a

That’s a symlink pointing to itself — a perfect loop.

What Happens Next?#

Finder:

Clicking on the alias gives a warning:

“The operation can’t be completed because the original item for ‘tmp_a’ can’t be found.”

Finder refuses to open it.
Terminal:

Trying to cd into the link gives:

1
cd: too many levels of symbolic links: tmp_a

The system detects the infinite recursion and blocks you.

So neither Finder nor the shell falls into an infinite loop — they both error out safely.

Why This Matters#

This experiment shows how symlinks are robustly handled at the OS level. Even if you create a circular chain like:

1
tmp_a -> tmp_b
2
tmp_b -> tmp_a

you’ll hit the same “too many levels of symbolic links” error. Tools like ls -l reveal the loop, and traversal stops.

It’s harmless to test, but pointless to keep. Recursive symlinks confuse software, break scripts, and don’t give you anything useful.

Takeaway#

Aliases (Finder shortcuts) and symlinks (Unix links) look similar but behave differently.
A symlink loop won’t crash your system, but it won’t work either.
If you want multiple paths to the same folder, point them all to the real target, not to each other.

👉 So next time you’re curious about the limits of symlinks: yes, you can make them point to themselves. No, it won’t break macOS. But you’ll just end up with a useless link and a funny error message.