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

In case where pwd can't be used (e.g. calling a scripts from a different location), use realpath (with or without dirname):

$(dirname $(realpath $PATH_TO_BE_RESOLVED))

Works both when calling through (multiple) symlink(s) or when directly calling the script - from any location.