READLINK(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 26 versions
, in arch rolling

okay bestie, welcome to readlink 💅 it lives in the User Commands corner of your manual, and it's here to spill the tea on symlinks.

🎀 NAME 🎀

readlink — print resolved symbolic links or canonical file names

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

readlink [OPTION]... FILE...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

first things first, no gatekeeping: realpath(1) is a better command for canonicalization functionality. fr fr. that's straight from the source, not me being dramatic.

what does this one do though? it prints the value of a symbolic link or canonical file name. that's the whole vibe. 🔥

💖 OPTIONS 💖

  • -f, --canonicalize — canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively; all but the last component must exist. like, everything except the final piece has to actually be there, no exceptions. 👑
  • -e, --canonicalize-existing — canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively; all components must exist. stricter than -f, the whole chain gotta be real. ⭐
  • -m, --canonicalize-missing — canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively, without requirements on components existence. no vibe check required, it just goes. 🧚
  • -n, --no-newline — do not output the trailing delimiter. she said no extra characters at the end, periodt. 🎀
  • -q, --quiet — (no description in the original, bestie — it's just there, living its mystery life 🙈)
  • -s, --silent — suppress most error messages (on by default if POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set). so quiet mode is the default unless that env var says otherwise. 💜
  • -v, --verbose — report error messages (on by default if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set). so loud mode is the default when that env var is set. literally the flip side of -s. 😭
  • -z, --zero — end each output line with NUL, not newline. perfect for when newlines are giving chaos. ✨
  • --help — display this help and exit
  • --version — output version information and exit

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Dmitry V. Levin. we stan. 🫶

💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

found a bug? not me gatekeeping the contact info:

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. read that again bestie, NO WARRANTY. 🫠

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/readlink>

or available locally via: info '(coreutils) readlink invocation'

okay that's the whole page, mwah 💋 this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026 — thanks for coming to my ted talk, now go resolve some symlinks bestie 🦋💖

📦 where this page comes from