How do I change my pwd to the real path of a symlinked directory?

Question

Here's a rather elementary *nix question:

Given the following symlink creation:

ln -s /usr/local/projects/myproject/ myproject 

... from my home directory /home/jvf/, entering the myproject symlink gives me a pwd /home/jfv/myproject/. Now, I would like to enter the parent directory of the directory I've symlinked to, but the cd .. command will only bring me back to my home directory /home/jfv/. Is there anyway to escape the symlink trail that I've entered, and instead have a pwd equal to the actual path of the myproject directory. That is, changing my pwd from /home/jfv/myproject/ into /usr/local/projects/myproject/?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

Just use -P (physical) flag:

pwd -P  cd -P .. 

Answer 2

If you do the following you should be OK.

1) First you follow your symlink:

[jfv@localhost ~]$ cd myproject 

2) Now you execute the following command:

[jfv@localhost myproject]$ cd -P ./ 

3) Now, you can check your location and you will see that you are on the physical directory

[jfv@localhost myproject]$ pwd 

The output will be as follows:

/usr/local/projects/myproject 

Now, everything you do will be local and not on the symlink.