When to use the readlink command in Linux?

readlink command in Linux is used to print resolved symbolic links or canonical file names. In simple words whenever we have a symbolic link and we want to know what path it represents. Then, in that case, the readlink command comes into play to show the actual path of the symbolic link. Syntax: readlink [OPTION]…

How can I get the behavior of GNU’s readlink-F on?

On Linux, the readlink utility accepts an option -f that follows additional links. This doesn’t seem to work on Mac and possibly BSD based systems. What would the equivalent be? $ which readlink; readlink -f /usr/bin/readlink readlink: illegal option -f usage: readlink [-n] [file …]

Is there readlink F in NetBSD or OpenBSD?

readlink -f was in OpenBSD long before GNU. All of NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD now have readlink -f (your link even mentions it). realpath has been in FreeBSD and IRIX for a long time (don’t know if it predates the one in Debian). HPUX and IRIX also have readlink, though not -f.

How to read the contents of a symbolic link?

The readlink () function shall place the contents of the symbolic link referred to by path in the buffer buf which has size bufsize. If the number of bytes in the symbolic link is less than bufsize, the contents of the remainder of buf are unspecified.

How to run readlink and realpath in Linux?

However, an additional requirement is to have the output of this command relative to the /home/himanshu directory. Then following is the command that you need to execute: So you can see that the ‘–relative-to’ option allowed you to have output relative to the /home/himanshu directory.

Where does readlink ( ) put the link pathname?

readlink () places the contents of the symbolic link pathname in the buffer buf, which has size bufsiz. readlink () does not append a terminating null byte to buf.

Which is the delimiting character in readlink and realpath?

By default, newline is used as the delimiting character. However, both commands provide way to have NUL as delimiter instead. The option you need to use in both cases is -z. What we’ve discussed here are just a handful of options/features these commands provide.