How To Confirm Symlink Destination

Back to basics day: a very simple tip on working with one of the most useful things available in Unix and Linux filesystems: symbolic links (symlinks).

How Symlinks Look in ls command

When using long-form ls output, symlinks will be shown like this:

greys@mcfly:~/proj/unixtutorial $ ls -la
total 435736
-rwxr-xr-x   1 greys  staff        819 14 Dec  2018 .gitignore
drwxr-xr-x   3 greys  staff         96 20 Nov 09:27 github
drwxr-xr-x   4 greys  staff        128 20 Nov 10:58 scripts
lrwxr-xr-x   1 greys  staff         30 10 Dec 20:40 try -> /Users/greys/proj/unixtutorial
drwxr-xr-x  44 greys  staff       1408 20 Nov 10:54 wpengine

Show Symlink Destination with readlink

As with pretty much everything in Unix, there's a simple command (readlink) that reads a symbolic link and shows you the destination it's pointing to. Very handy for scripting:

greys@mcfly:~/proj/unixtutorial $ readlink try
/Users/greys/proj/unixtutorial

It has a very basic syntax: you just specify a file or directory name, and if it's a symlink you'll get the full path to the destination as the result.

If readlink returns nothing, this means the object you're inspecting isn't a symlink at all. Based on the outputs above, if I check readlink for the regular scripts directory, I won't get anything back:

greys@mcfly:~/proj/unixtutorial $ readlink scripts
greys@mcfly:~/proj/unixtutorial $

See Also

• Basic Unix Commands
• Advanced Unix Commands
• ln command
• Symlink example
• Unix Tutorial Glossary

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