Absolutize possibly non-existent path in bash? (linux)

Question

There are many instances on SO where people have asked how best to absolutize a path in bash, but I haven't found any that deal with absolutizing non-yet-existent paths.

The cd $1 && pwd method does not work at all for non-existent paths.

The readlink -f $1 method will only work for one level of non-existence; that is, it will work for "~/sdkjf", but not for "~/sdkjf/qweuio"

Ideally, I would like a method that would expand the latter to /home/username/sdkjf/qweuio ... and would also do similar transforms for ./ and ../

Can you recommend a solution?

Answer 1

readlink -m $1

From the manpage:

  -m, --canonicalize-missing
          canonicalize  by  following  every  symlink  in every component of the given 
          name recursively, without requirements on components existence