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

Here I present what I believe to be a cross-platform (Linux and macOS at least) solution to the answer that is working well for me currently.

crosspath()
{
    local ref="$1"
    if [ -x "$(which realpath)" ]; then
        path="$(realpath "$ref")"
    else
        path="$(readlink -f "$ref" 2> /dev/null)"
        if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
            if [ -x "$(which readlink)" ]; then
                if [ ! -z "$(readlink "$ref")" ]; then
                    ref="$(readlink "$ref")"
                fi
            else
                echo "realpath and readlink not available. The following may not be the final path." 1>&2
            fi
            if [ -d "$ref" ]; then
                path="$(cd "$ref"; pwd -P)"
            else
                path="$(cd $(dirname "$ref"); pwd -P)/$(basename "$ref")"
            fi
        fi
    fi
    echo "$path"
}

Here is a macOS (only?) solution. Possibly better suited to the original question.

mac_realpath()
{
    local ref="$1"
    if [[ ! -z "$(readlink "$ref")" ]]; then
        ref="$(readlink "$1")"
    fi
    if [[ -d "$ref" ]]; then
        echo "$(cd "$ref"; pwd -P)"
    else
        echo "$(cd $(dirname "$ref"); pwd -P)/$(basename "$ref")"
    fi
}