Display Only Files and Folders That Are Symbolic Links in Tcsh or Bash

Display only files and folders that are symbolic links in tcsh or bash

Find all the symbolic links in a directory:

ls -l `find /usr/bin -maxdepth 1 -type l -print`

For the listing of hidden files:

ls -ald .*

How to resolve symbolic links in a shell script

According to the standards, pwd -P should return the path with symlinks resolved.

C function char *getcwd(char *buf, size_t size) from unistd.h should have the same behaviour.

getcwd
pwd

Add trailing slash in tcsh completion of directory symbolic links

This is how tcsh should behave by default; but it's controlled with the addsuffix setting; from tcsh(1):

   addsuffix (+)
           If set, filename completion adds `/' to the end of directories
           and a space to the end of normal files when they are matched
           exactly.  Set by default.

Bash: how to get real path of a symlink?

readlink is not a standard command, but it's common on Linux and BSD, including OS X, and it's the most straightforward answer to your question. BSD and GNU readlink implementations are different, so read the documentation for the one you have.

If readlink is not available, or you need to write a cross-platform script that isn't bound to a specific implementation:

If the symlink is also a directory, then

cd -P "$symlinkdir"

will get you into the dereferenced directory, so

echo "I am in $(cd -P "$symlinkdir" && pwd)"

will echo the fully dereferenced directory. That said, cd -P dereferences the entire path, so if you have more than one symlink in the same path you can have unexpected results.

If the symlink is to a file, not a directory, you may not need to dereference the link. Most commands follow symlinks harmlessly. If you simply want to check if a file is a link, use test -L.

How to get the list of files in a directory in a shell script?

search_dir=/the/path/to/base/dir/
for entry in "$search_dir"/*
do
  echo "$entry"
done

Listing only directories using ls in Bash?

*/ is a pattern that matches all of the subdirectories in the current directory (* would match all files and subdirectories; the / restricts it to directories). Similarly, to list all subdirectories under /home/alice/Documents, use ls -d /home/alice/Documents/*/

How to check if a symlink exists

-L returns true if the "file" exists and is a symbolic link (the linked file may or may not exist). You want -f (returns true if file exists and is a regular file) or maybe just -e (returns true if file exists regardless of type).

According to the GNU manpage, -h is identical to -L, but according to the BSD manpage, it should not be used:

-h file True if file exists and is a symbolic link. This operator is retained for compatibility with previous versions of this program. Do not rely on its existence; use -L instead.

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