How do I get the canonical path for a symlink target?

1. In its simplest form, readlink will dereference any symlink component in a given path recursively till all symlinks are replaced by real path components.

     $ readlink -f <path> 

   For this to work, all symlinks must exist and point to a valid path. The only exception is the last (or real) path component which need not exist.

2. Passing -e option to readlink can enforce a check for existance of all path components (including the last one). If any of the symlinks is broken, an error is generated.

     $ readlink -e <path>

3. Sometimes it is advisable not to worry if the path components exist in the file system. readlink has a -m option to do this.

For further information, see  $ man readlink

tags: linux  command line  

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