To remove a symbolic link, use either the rm or unlink command followed by the name of the symlink as an argument. When removing a symbolic link that points to a directory do not append a trailing slash to the symlink name.
Remove a Symbolic Link using the rm command You can also use the -i flag with the rm command to prompt for confirmation. After that, you can use the ls -l command to confirm if the symlink has been removed. That is all there is to it!
To dereference a symbolic link means to follow the link to the target file rather than work with the link itself. When you dereference a symbolic link, you end up with a pointer to the file (the filename of the target file). The term no-dereference is a double negative: It means reference.
No. rm -rf won't follow symbolic links - it will simply remove them.
readlink -f "$path"
Editor's note: The above works with GNU readlink
and FreeBSD/PC-BSD/OpenBSD readlink
, but not on OS X as of 10.11.
GNU readlink
offers additional, related options, such as -m
for resolving a symlink whether or not the ultimate target exists.
Note since GNU coreutils 8.15 (2012-01-06), there is a realpath program available that is less obtuse and more flexible than the above. It's also compatible with the FreeBSD util of the same name. It also includes functionality to generate a relative path between two files.
realpath $path
[Admin addition below from comment by halloleo —danorton]
For Mac OS X (through at least 10.11.x), use readlink
without the -f
option:
readlink $path
Editor's note: This will not resolve symlinks recursively and thus won't report the ultimate target; e.g., given symlink a
that points to b
, which in turn points to c
, this will only report b
(and won't ensure that it is output as an absolute path).
Use the following perl
command on OS X to fill the gap of the missing readlink -f
functionality:perl -MCwd -le 'print Cwd::abs_path(shift)' "$path"
According to the standards, pwd -P
should return the path with symlinks resolved.
C function char *getcwd(char *buf, size_t size)
from unistd.h
should have the same behaviour.
getcwd pwd
"pwd -P" seems to work if you just want the directory, but if for some reason you want the name of the actual executable I don't think that helps. Here's my solution:
#!/bin/bash
# get the absolute path of the executable
SELF_PATH=$(cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "$0")" && pwd -P) && SELF_PATH=$SELF_PATH/$(basename -- "$0")
# resolve symlinks
while [[ -h $SELF_PATH ]]; do
# 1) cd to directory of the symlink
# 2) cd to the directory of where the symlink points
# 3) get the pwd
# 4) append the basename
DIR=$(dirname -- "$SELF_PATH")
SYM=$(readlink "$SELF_PATH")
SELF_PATH=$(cd "$DIR" && cd "$(dirname -- "$SYM")" && pwd)/$(basename -- "$SYM")
done
One of my favorites is realpath foo
realpath - return the canonicalized absolute pathname realpath expands all symbolic links and resolves references to '/./', '/../' and extra '/' characters in the null terminated string named by path and stores the canonicalized absolute pathname in the buffer of size PATH_MAX named by resolved_path. The resulting path will have no symbolic link, '/./' or '/../' components.
readlink -e [filepath]
seems to be exactly what you're asking for - it accepts an arbirary path, resolves all symlinks, and returns the "real" path - and it's "standard *nix" that likely all systems already have
Another way:
# Gets the real path of a link, following all links
myreadlink() { [ ! -h "$1" ] && echo "$1" || (local link="$(expr "$(command ls -ld -- "$1")" : '.*-> \(.*\)$')"; cd $(dirname $1); myreadlink "$link" | sed "s|^\([^/].*\)\$|$(dirname $1)/\1|"); }
# Returns the absolute path to a command, maybe in $PATH (which) or not. If not found, returns the same
whereis() { echo $1 | sed "s|^\([^/].*/.*\)|$(pwd)/\1|;s|^\([^/]*\)$|$(which -- $1)|;s|^$|$1|"; }
# Returns the realpath of a called command.
whereis_realpath() { local SCRIPT_PATH=$(whereis $1); myreadlink ${SCRIPT_PATH} | sed "s|^\([^/].*\)\$|$(dirname ${SCRIPT_PATH})/\1|"; }
Putting some of the given solutions together, knowing that readlink is available on most systems, but needs different arguments, this works well for me on OSX and Debian. I'm not sure about BSD systems. Maybe the condition needs to be [[ $OSTYPE != darwin* ]]
to exclude -f
from OSX only.
#!/bin/bash
MY_DIR=$( cd $(dirname $(readlink `[[ $OSTYPE == linux* ]] && echo "-f"` $0)) ; pwd -P)
echo "$MY_DIR"
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