On Sun, Sep 5, 2021, at 11:11 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote:
> L A Walsh <[email protected]> writes:
> > I know how -h can detect a symlink, but I was wondering, is
> > there a way for bash to know where the symlink points (without
> > using an external program)?
>
> My understanding is that it has been convention to use the "readlink"
> program for a very long time, so there's never been much demand to add
> it to bash. Of course, looking at the options to readlink shows that
> there are several different meanings of "where a symlink points".
The distribution ships with a "realpath" loadable builtin, FWIW.
bash-5.1$ enable -f /opt/local/lib/bash/realpath realpath
bash-5.1$ type realpath
realpath is a shell builtin
bash-5.1$ readlink /usr/bin/cc
clang
bash-5.1$ realpath /usr/bin/cc
/usr/bin/clang
--
vq
