How to Get the Target of a Symlink

Having a dirent that is a symbolic link, how can I get the link-target's path name?

Use the readlink/readlinkat(2) system call.

windows symbolic link target

As Harry Johnston said dir command shows the target of symbolic links

2014/07/31  11:22    <DIR>          libs
2014/08/01  13:53             4,997 mobile.iml
2014/07/31  11:22               689 proguard-rules.pro
2014/09/28  10:54    <JUNCTION>     res [\??\C:\Users\_____\mobile\src\main\res]

JAVA how to find the target file path that a symbolic link points to?

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/nio/file/Path.html#toRealPath-java.nio.file.LinkOption...-

Path toRealPath(LinkOption... options)
throws IOException Returns the real path of an existing file. The precise definition of this method is implementation dependent but
in general it derives from this path, an absolute path that locates
the same file as this path, but with name elements that represent the
actual name of the directories and the file. For example, where
filename comparisons on a file system are case insensitive then the
name elements represent the names in their actual case. Additionally,
the resulting path has redundant name elements removed.

If this path is relative then its absolute path is first obtained, as
if by invoking the toAbsolutePath method.

The options array may be used to indicate how symbolic links are
handled. By default, symbolic links are resolved to their final
target. If the option NOFOLLOW_LINKS is present then this method does
not resolve symbolic links. Some implementations allow special names
such as ".." to refer to the parent directory. When deriving the real
path, and a ".." (or equivalent) is preceded by a non-".." name then
an implementation will typically cause both names to be removed. When
not resolving symbolic links and the preceding name is a symbolic link
then the names are only removed if it guaranteed that the resulting
path will locate the same file as this path.

Parameters: options - options indicating how symbolic links are
handled Returns: an absolute path represent the real path of the file
located by this object Throws: IOException - if the file does not
exist or an I/O error occurs SecurityException - In the case of the
default provider, and a security manager is installed, its checkRead
method is invoked to check read access to the file, and where this
path is not absolute, its checkPropertyAccess method is invoked to
check access to the system property user.dir

Use the toRealPath() method from nio. The NO_FOLLOW_LINKS LinkOption does the opposite of what you are trying to do, so don't use it.

Path realPath = aFile.toPath().toRealPath()

Path realPath = aPath().toRealPath()

One gotcha with this, is that, unlike toAbsolutePath, toRealPath throws an IOException since it actually has to interact with the file system to find the real path.

How can I get the target of a symlink in Perl 6?

There is no equivalent in Perl 6 for that to my knowledge.

The closest thing to a solution, is to zef install P5readlink (https://modules.raku.org/dist/P5readlink) and use readlink like you would in Perl 5.

Get the full path of the symlink target in Ansible

stat module returns lnk_source and lnk_target which should do the trick.

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Pay attention to confusing names:

• lnk_source => Target of the symlink normalized for the remote filesystem
• lnk_target => Target of the symlink. Note that relative paths remain relative

For the actual SOURCE of the symlink, well, it's just path.

How do I access in Python the link text of a symlink?

You can use os.readlink(path) to find the linked file of a symbolic link. From the documentation:

Return a string representing the path to which the symbolic link points.

Also check out this more detailed answer in a related SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42426912/3628578

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