I've read the man page for the "ln" command and read there is an option that will not overwrite a symbolic link if one of the same name already exists.

For example, if I already have a symbolic link called "myfile.txt" and attempt to create another one, there is an option for making a backup of the existing link file without overwriting it (i.e., I would now have a link called myfile.txt and one called myfile.txt.~1~). To me, this seemed ideal for a simple shell script I am writing for scanning directories for audio and video files and creating symbolic links to them.

The problem I ran into, however, is that the backup symbolic links are hidden. I assume this is because of the tildes (i.e., the ~ character) in the name. Before this I thought only files beginning with a period were hidden.

I attempted to use the suffix option with "ln" so that it would not use a tilde in hopes of making visible symbolic links; however, nothing I have tried has worked. I keep ending up with backup filenames that contain a tilde.

Here is an example of what I have tried to change the suffix from ~ to something like #.
Code:
ln --backup=numbered --suffix=# -s /media/shared/uupc_s02e16_high.ogg
With this command, I still end up with a symbolic link of uupc_s02e16_high.ogg~1~ when an existing symbolic link to the file already exists. I would rather have a suffix that does not make the link hidden. I'm not particular on what the suffix is, just as long as it does not make the link hidden.

I've tried other characters for the suffix besides #, but still end up with the tildes.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.