How can I remove a hard link to my home directory in a subdirectory?

You can't have hard links to directories.

You should explain why you think you have a hard link to your home directory.

You should not attempt any further remediation.

mtimc wrote:

The good news is that I removed the hard link with `Finder`, although I'd like to understand what it did as using a GUI is hardly a repeatable process.

The code above should show that in the directory `/Users/tim/Projects/prune` there is a subdirectory `~` that `stat` shows has the same inet node as `/Users/tim`

To clarify. The ~ path is a built-in shell shortcut to your home directory. So if you start talking about trying to delete it, people are going to simply think you're confused and about to delete all of your files. A screenshot would have cleared up the misunderstanding.

It's possible that some misconfigured script or app created the /Users/tim/Projects/prune/~ object, assuming that it really existed. If so, then the Finder would be the appropriate method to remove it.

I don't know how I managed to create this.

Maybe you should review whatever the "prune" project is doing.

mtimc wrote:

I'm not sure how this happened, but I've got a hard link to my home directory in a subdirectory of my home directory. This is not healthy - it's hard coded to be avoided in the Linux kernel. I've confirmed that the hard link is there:

MacBookPro:prune tim$ stat ~

16777220 1036638 drwxr-xr-x 213 tim staff 0 6816 "Sep 7 22:17:12 2025" "Sep 7 22:17:12 2025" "Sep 7 22:17:12 2025" "Sep 6 15:27:40 2018" 4096 0 0 /Users/tim

MacBookPro:prune tim$ pwd

/Users/tim/Projects/prune

I don't know what happened to cause this, but I'd like to remove it

`rm` doesn't work.

pwd

/Users/tim/Projects/prune

MacBookPro:prune tim$ rm ~

rm: /Users/tim: is a directory

not sure I get it...?

copy and paste:

cd 

`rm` doesn't work.

And a good thing it didn't.