READLINK(1)

📦
version 0.12.0 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

okay bestie, welcome to readlink, a General Commands Manual classic ✨ and honestly? it's giving "small tool, big power". she reads symlinks. she tells you the truth about where things actually live. no cap. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

readlink — print value of a symbolic link or canonical file name 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

readlink [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Print value of a symbolic link or canonical file name.

that's it. that's the whole job. she looks at a link, she says "this points over there", periodt. 👑

💖 OPTIONS 💖

  • -f, --canonicalize — canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively; all but the last component must exist 🫶
  • -e, --canonicalize-existing — canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively, and this time all components must exist — no skipping, no vibes-only paths 😤
  • -m, --canonicalize-missing — canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively, without requirements on components existence — she's chill, she does not care if things exist fr fr 🙈
  • -n, --no-newline — do not output the trailing delimiter 🚫
  • -q, --quiet — suppress most error messages 🤫
  • -s, --silent — suppress most error messages (same energy, different letter, iconic) 🤐
  • -v, --verbose — report error message 📢
  • -z, --zero — separate output with NUL rather than newline 👀
  • -h, --help — Print help 🆘
  • -V, --version — Print version 🏷️
  • <files> — the files, bestie. the actual things you're pointing her at 📁

💀 VERSION 💀

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Get the actual file to which the symlink points:

readlink path/to/file

Get the absolute path to a file:

readlink [-f|--canonicalize] path/to/file
🧚 The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.

and that's the page, bestie 🍓 before you go: this little legend lives in the General Commands Manual, she's tagged as READLINK(1), she's sourced from v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, and the whole thing is dated 2026-09-25 ⭐ go forth and canonicalize, you absolute main character 👑💜

📦 where this page comes from