How to resolve symbolic links in a shell script

Question

Given an absolute or relative path (in a Unix-like system), I would like to determine the full path of the target after resolving any intermediate symlinks. Bonus points for

Answer 1

Since I've run into this many times over the years, and this time around I needed a pure bash portable version that I could use on OSX and linux, I went ahead and wrote one:

The living version lives here:

https://github.com/keen99/shell-functions/tree/master/resolve_path

but for the sake of SO, here's the current version (I feel it's well tested..but I'm open to feedback!)

Might not be difficult to make it work for plain bourne shell (sh), but I didn't try...I like $FUNCNAME too much. :)

#!/bin/bash

resolve_path() {
    #I'm bash only, please!
    # usage:  resolve_path  
    # follows symlinks and relative paths, returns a full real path
    #
    local owd="$PWD"
    #echo "$FUNCNAME for $1" >&2
    local opath="$1"
    local npath=""
    local obase=$(basename "$opath")
    local odir=$(dirname "$opath")
    if [[ -L "$opath" ]]
    then
    #it's a link.
    #file or directory, we want to cd into it's dir
        cd $odir
    #then extract where the link points.
        npath=$(readlink "$obase")
        #have to -L BEFORE we -f, because -f includes -L :(
        if [[ -L $npath ]]
         then
        #the link points to another symlink, so go follow that.
            resolve_path "$npath"
            #and finish out early, we're done.
            return $?
            #done
        elif [[ -f $npath ]]
        #the link points to a file.
         then
            #get the dir for the new file
            nbase=$(basename $npath)
            npath=$(dirname $npath)
            cd "$npath"
            ndir=$(pwd -P)
            retval=0
            #done
        elif [[ -d $npath ]]
         then
        #the link points to a directory.
            cd "$npath"
            ndir=$(pwd -P)
            retval=0
            #done
        else
            echo "$FUNCNAME: ERROR: unknown condition inside link!!" >&2
            echo "opath [[ $opath ]]" >&2
            echo "npath [[ $npath ]]" >&2
            return 1
        fi
    else
        if ! [[ -e "$opath" ]]
         then
            echo "$FUNCNAME: $opath: No such file or directory" >&2
            return 1
            #and break early
        elif [[ -d "$opath" ]]
         then 
            cd "$opath"
            ndir=$(pwd -P)
            retval=0
            #done
        elif [[ -f "$opath" ]]
         then
            cd $odir
            ndir=$(pwd -P)
            nbase=$(basename "$opath")
            retval=0
            #done
        else
            echo "$FUNCNAME: ERROR: unknown condition outside link!!" >&2
            echo "opath [[ $opath ]]" >&2
            return 1
        fi
    fi
    #now assemble our output
    echo -n "$ndir"
    if [[ "x${nbase:=}" != "x" ]]
     then
        echo "/$nbase"
    else 
        echo
    fi
    #now return to where we were
    cd "$owd"
    return $retval
}

here's a classic example, thanks to brew:

%% ls -l `which mvn`
lrwxr-xr-x  1 draistrick  502  29 Dec 17 10:50 /usr/local/bin/mvn@ -> ../Cellar/maven/3.2.3/bin/mvn

use this function and it will return the -real- path:

%% cat test.sh
#!/bin/bash
. resolve_path.inc
echo
echo "relative symlinked path:"
which mvn
echo
echo "and the real path:"
resolve_path `which mvn`


%% test.sh

relative symlinked path:
/usr/local/bin/mvn

and the real path:
/usr/local/Cellar/maven/3.2.3/libexec/bin/mvn