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CategoryShell

How can I display the target of a symbolic link?

The nonstandard external command readlink(1) can be used to display the target of a symbolic link: 

$ readlink /bin/sh
bash

If you don't have readlink, you can use Perl: 

perl -e 'print readlink "/bin/sh", "\n"'

You can also use GNU find's -printf %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 both readlink and Perl, you can use a function like this one: 

# Bash
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
}

However, this can fail if a symbolic link contains " -> " in its target.

CategoryShell

BashFAQ/029 (last edited 2013-07-26 22:44:57 by StephaneChazelas)