How to list all members of a symlink-chain?

Question

Finding the java binaries can be painful:

• which java gives /usr/bin/java
• lh $(which java) gives /usr/bin/java -> /etc/alternatives/java
• lh /etc/alternatives/java gives /etc/alternatives/java -> /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0_66/bin/java

Is there a way to automatically follow the symlink-chain and print all members? e.g. whichfollow or follow /usr/bin/java could give:

/usr/bin/java
-> /etc/alternatives/java
-> /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0_66/bin/java

Answer 1

In addition to the readlink command, GNU/Linux users can use the namei command from the util-linux package. According to its man page:

namei uses its arguments as pathnames to any type of Unix file (symlinks, files, directories, and so forth). namei then follows each pathname until an endpoint is found (a file, a directory, a device node, etc). If it finds a symbolic link, it shows the link, and starts following it, indenting the output to show the context.

Its output isn’t as pretty as you would like but it shows each path components and shows if its a directory, symbolic link, socket, block device, character device, FIFO (named pipe) or regular file.

Example usage:

$ namei  /usr/bin/java

f: /usr/bin/java
 d /
 d usr
 d bin
 l java -> /etc/alternatives/java
   d /
   d etc
   d alternatives
   l java -> /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.7.0-openjdk/bin/java
     d /
     d usr
     d lib
     d jvm
     l jre-1.7.0-openjdk -> java-1.7.0-openjdk-1.7.0.85/jre
       d java-1.7.0-openjdk-1.7.0.85
       d jre
     d bin
     - java