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From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Symbolic links and Bourne shell...
Keywords: pwd, ls, ln -s
Message-ID: <1990Sep7.172657.24950@iwarp.intel.com>
Date: 7 Sep 90 17:26:57 GMT
References: <19417@well.sf.ca.us> <1990Sep7.140159.4832@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Sender: news@iwarp.intel.com
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Lines: 25
In-Reply-To: boysko@dsrgsun.CES.CWRU.Edu (Glenn Boysko)

In article <1990Sep7.140159.4832@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>, boysko@dsrgsun (Glenn Boysko) writes:
| In Bourne shell, how can you find the path pointed to be a symbolic link?
| However, in Bourne shell, pwd returns the same value as SYMLINK.  Does anyone
| know how to get this info in a Bourne shell without typing:
| 
| 	% linkpath="`csh -c 'cd $SYMLINK; pwd'`"

I use /bin/pwd, as in:

	(cd /SOMEWHERE/THAT/MAY/BE/A/SYMLINK; /bin/pwd)

which avoids any builtin pwd command (in either sh or csh) that may be
fooled by the presence of symlinks.

I also have a script (in Perl, natch) that expands symlinks step by
step to tell me how "expensive" they are (we had a lot of off-machine
symlinks that were pointing to other possibly on-machine directories
that were causing a lot of net traffic).

Just another Unix hacker,
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III      |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
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