Anchor(faq29)

The external command readlink can be used to display the value of a symbolic link. 

$ readlink /bin/sh
bash

you can also use GNU find's %l directive, which is especially useful if you need to resolve links in batches: 

$ find /bin/ -type l -printf '%p points to %l\n'
/bin/sh points to bash
/bin/bunzip2 points to bzip2
...

If your system lacks readlink, you can use a function like this one: 

readlink() {
    local path=$1 ll

    if [ -L "$path" ]; then
        ll="$(LC_ALL=C ls -l "$path" 2> /dev/null)" &&
        echo "${ll/* -> }"
    else
        return 1
    fi
}