The svn:special property is the only svn: property that isn't meant to be directly set or modified by users. Subversion automatically sets this property whenever a “special” object is scheduled for addition, such as a symbolic link. The repository stores an svn:special object as an ordinary file. However, when a client sees this property during checkouts or updates, it interprets the contents of the file and translates the item back into the special type of object. In versions of Subversion current at the time of writing, only versioned symbolic links have this property attached, but in future versions of Subversion other special types of nodes will probably use this property as well.

Note: Windows clients don't have symbolic links, and thus ignore any svn:special files coming from a repository that claim to be symbolic links. On Windows, the user ends up with an ordinary versioned file in the working copy.