Finding the original file of a symbolic link

Question

So let's say I have a symbolic link of a file in my home directory to another file on a different partition. How would I find the target location of the linked file? By this, I mean, let's say I have file2 in /home/user/; but it's a symbolic link to another file1. How would I find file1 without manually having to go through each partition/directory to find the file?

Please expand on "original file". What if file1 is a symlink to file0 ? Do you want to find the last target of your symlink (file0) or just the next one (file1) ? — don_crissti, Nov 12 '14 at 20:30
Drag and drop the link to firefox. Firefox will show the original file address as URL. — Guest, Feb 11 '20 at 07:03

score 68 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 01 '22 at 18:49

68

Use readlink:

readlink -f /path/file

( last target of your symlink if there's more than one level )

If you just want the next level of symbolic link, use:

readlink /path/file

You can also use realpath on modern systems with GNU coreutils (e.g. Linux), FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or DragonFly:

realpath /path/file

which is similar to readlink -f.

edited Feb 01 '22 at 18:49

Cristian Ciupitu

2,510

answered Nov 12 '14 at 20:07

Gilles Quénot

33,867

im getting no output – k-Rocker Nov 12 '14 at 20:09
You should have one ! Error or a path – Gilles Quénot Nov 12 '14 at 20:11
no nothing: user@shell a5$ readlink -f ./student1.java and i get user@shell a5$ – k-Rocker Nov 12 '14 at 20:13
nvm, my symbolic link wasnt setup right, not sure why. but i made a new one and it works, thanks. – k-Rocker Nov 12 '14 at 20:22
4

FWIW readlink /path/file will return the next target. – don_crissti Nov 12 '14 at 20:43
1

I think nowadays realpath(1) is considered the right way; usage is v similar to readlink.. – kaiwan Dec 04 '19 at 08:27

Costas · Answer 2 · 2014-11-12T20:33:36.367

8

1.

ls -l bin

produce

lrwxrwxrwx 1 az az 14 Ноя 12 22:13 bin -> ../Gdrive/bin/

2.

file bin

produce

bin: symbolic link to `../Gdrive/bin/'

3.

stat bin

produce

File: «bin» -> «../Gdrive/bin/»

edited Nov 12 '14 at 20:33

answered Nov 12 '14 at 20:16

Costas

14,916

ok well im trying to make a script, so how would i use these? im new to linux. – k-Rocker Nov 12 '14 at 20:21
2

@k-Rocker If you explain what you intend to do it would be better. – Costas Nov 12 '14 at 20:29

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 17 '18 at 21:38

Simplest way: cd to where the symbolic link is located and do ls -l to list the details of the files.

The part to the right of -> after the symbolic link is the destination to which it is pointing.

Ex:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 userName groupName 22 Jan 17 13:29 Link to temp.txt -> /home/user/temp.txt

Here we have "Link to temp.txt" that points to (->) "/home/user/temp.txt".

But, like @Gilles Quenot points out, you can also just do readlink -f /path/to/symbolic_link

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 07 '17 at 22:05

Expanding on Costas

Suppose you have

ln -s test.txt sym_link_1.txt
ls -l sym_link_1.txt
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 a1 g1 8 Jan  7 16:59 sym_link_1.txt -> test.txt

In a script you can do (use backticks)

ln -s `readlink sym_link_1.txt` sym_link_2.txt

Then you have

ls -l sym_link_*.txt
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 a1 g1 8 Jan  7 16:59 sym_link_1.txt -> test.txt
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 a1 g1 8 Jan  7 17:01 sym_link_2.txt -> test.txt

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 24 '19 at 03:04

Another method (which are not answered previously) to find link files is to use the below command,

file -h <path_to_dir>/* | grep link

Command:

file -h /home/prateek/* | grep link

Output:

/home/prateek/Music: symbolic link to /media/prateek/HD-E1/Music

Finding the original file of a symbolic link

5 Answers5

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