In order to update my website files without disturbing any users, I
need to atomically repoint an existing symbolic link from one folder to another. 

Let's say we have this in /www/vhosts:

lrwxrwxrwx    1 user     user           36 May 26 08:12 domain.com ->
/www/vhosts/folder_a
drwxrwxr-x   10 user     user         4096 Dec 30 01:37 folder_a
drwxrwxr-x   10 user     user         4096 Dec 30 01:37 folder_b


I need the proper unix shell command(s) to ATOMICALLY repoint the
domain.com symlink from folder_a to folder_b.

I have tried to do it in one step with:

ln -nsf  /www/vhosts/folder_b /www/vhosts/domain.com 

BUT the -f flag, which forces unlink of the destination if it exists,
seems to be breaking the atomicity of the process.
I have seen several errors generated at the exact time the ln takes
place which leads me to believe that
there is a fraction of a second when the domain.com symbolic link does
not exist -- after it has been removed and before the
new symbolic link has been created.

I need an atomic solution to this problem.  I have unsuccessfully
tried a several step solution using the mv and rename
commands with no luck. 

With the mv command, I created a temporary symlink pointing to
folder_b and tried to do:

mv /www/vhosts/temp.symlink.to.folder_b /www/vhosts/domain.com

BUT this resulted in moving the temporary symlink inside the
/www/vhosts/folder_a (which is where the domain.com symlink points)
instead of overwriting the symlink.

The attempt at renaming a temporary symlink over an existing symlink
did not work and resulted in no change in the directory.

Please help!  This has to be possible and should be really simple but
I have not been able to figure it out.

Thanks in advance.

Running "ln -nsf" under strace indeed shows the sequence of calls with
small gaps between
 symlink("bbb", "mysymlink")             = -1 EEXIST (File exists)
 unlink("mysymlink")                     = 0
 symlink("bbb", "mysymlink")             = 0


Does it need to be done from shell and not perl ?   Then you could use
a rename(2) system call rather than a rename(1) command.
In Perl:
    symlink("bbb", "mynewsymlink");         # new temp link not yet in use
    rename("mynewsymlink", "mysymlink");    # atomic

Perl could possibly be used, as a last resort scenario though.

Any idea if PHP's rename() function work in the same manner as Perl's?