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From: jeff@onion.pdx.com (Jeff Beadles)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Symbolic links and Bourne shell...
Keywords: pwd, ls, ln -s
Message-ID: <1990Sep9.001229.16144@onion.pdx.com>
Date: 9 Sep 90 00:12:29 GMT
References: <19417@well.sf.ca.us> <1990Sep7.140159.4832@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Organization: Little to none.
Lines: 38

boysko@dsrgsun.CES.CWRU.Edu (Glenn Boysko) writes:
>
>In Bourne shell, how can you find the path pointed to be a symbolic link?
>
>In C shell, you can type:
>
>	% set linkpath = "`cd $SYMLINK; pwd`"
>
>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'`"

Well, here's a different way.  The 'ls' command has an option 'L' that should
tell you the information that you need.  An excerpt from TFM...

...
     -L If argument is a symbolic link, list the file or
        directory the link references rather than the link
        itself.
...

Ie:
	% touch /usr/tmp/foo
	% ln -s /usr/tmp/foo ./bar
	% ls -L ./bar
	/usr/tmp/foo
	% ^D

Your mileage may vary.  I know that this does not work on all systems.  4.3BSD
is broken. :-(

If you have this option, you can do the following:
	linkpath="`ls -L $SYMLINK`"

	-Jeff
-- 
Jeff Beadles  jeff@onion.pdx.com  jeff@quark.wv.tek.com