Find out symbolic link target via command line

readlink is the command you want. You should look at the man page for the command. Because if you want to follow a chain of symbolic links to the actual file, then you need the -e or -f switch:

$ ln -s foooooo zipzip # fooooo doesn't actually exist $ ln -s zipzip zapzap $ # Follows it, but doesn't let you know the file doesn't actually exist $ readlink -f zapzap /home/kbrandt/scrap/foooooo $ # Follows it, but file not there $ readlink -e zapzap $ # Follows it, but just to the next symlink $ readlink zapzap zipzip 

This will also work:

ls -l /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt 

but readlink would be preferred for use in a script rather than parsing ls.

If you want to show the source and the destination of the link, try stat -c%N files*. E.g.

$ stat -c%N /dev/fd/* ‘/dev/fd/0’ -> ‘/dev/pts/4’ ‘/dev/fd/1’ -> ‘/dev/pts/4’ 

It’s not good for parsing (use readlink for that), but it shows link name and destination, without the clutter of ls -l

-c can be written --format and %N means “quoted file name with dereference if symbolic link”.

The readlink is a good thing, but GNU-specific and non cross platform. I used to write cross platform scripts for /bin/sh, therefore I'd use something like:

 ls -l /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt | awk '{print $NF}' 

or:

 ls -l /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt | awk -F"-> " '{print $2}' 

but these needs to be tested on different platforms. I think they'll work, but don't 100% sure for ls output format.

The result of ls can also be parsed within bash without depending on an external command like awk, sed or perl.

This bash_realpath function, resolves the final destination of a link (link→link→link→final):

bash_realpath() { # print the resolved path # @params # 1: the path to resolve # @return # >&1: the resolved link path local path="${1}" while [[ -L ${path} && "$(ls -l "${path}")" =~ -\>\ (.*) ]] do path="${BASH_REMATCH[1]}" done echo "${path}" } 

If you can't use readlink, then parsing the result of ls -l could be done like this.

The normal result would be:

ls -l /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Jan 1 12:00 /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt -> /root/Public/mytextfile.txt 

So we want to replace everything before " -> " and the arrow included. We could use sed for this:

ls -l /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt | sed 's/^.* -> //' /root/Public/mytextfile.txt 

The question is not accurate enough to give a simple answer as the one of brian-brazil:

readlink -f some_path 

will indeed dereference every symlink involved in the path construct to the final target behind some_path.

But one level of cascading symlinks is just a particular case among others in a system, the general case being N levels of cascading symlinks. Look at the following on my system:

$ rwhich emacs /usr/bin/emacs /etc/alternatives/emacs /usr/bin/emacs24-x 

rwhich is my own recursive implementation of which that prints all of the intermediate cascading symlinks (to stderr) down to the final target (to stdout).

Then if I want to know what is:

• the target of symlink /usr/bin/emacs**, the obvious answer to me is /etc/alternatives/emacs as returned by:

  readlink $(which emacs) readlink /usr/bin/emacs 

• the final target behind cascading symlinks /usr/bin/emacs, the answer shall be /usr/bin/emacs24-x as returned by:

  readlink -f $(which emacs) readlink -f /usr/bin/emacs rwhich emacs 2>/dev/null 

ll or ls -l should list the directory items, including your symbolic link and it's target

cd -P /root/Public/myothertextfile.txt (in your case) should point to the original path

If you find the target of all links within a folder and its subfolder use the find . -type l -ls command with link type as follows:

[email protected]:~/test$ find . -type l -ls 8601855888 0 lrwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 6 Jan 24 19:53 ./link -> target 

If you want the target of a single, then ls -l should work:

[email protected]:~/test$ ls -l total 0 lrwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 6 Jan 24 19:53 link -> target -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Jan 24 19:53 target