readlink(1) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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READLINK(1)             NetBSD General Commands Manual             READLINK(1)


NAME

     readlink -- display target of a symbolic link


SYNOPSIS

     readlink [-fnqsv] file ...


DESCRIPTION

     The readlink utility displays the target of a symbolic link.  If a given
     argument file is not a symbolic link and the -f option is not specified,
     readlink will print nothing to standard output about that file and even-
     tually exit with an error status.  If the -f option is specified, the
     output is canonicalized by following every symlink in every component of
     the given path recursively.  readlink will resolve both absolute and rel-
     ative paths, and, if possible, return the absolute pathname corresponding
     to file.  In this case, the argument does not need to be a symbolic link.

     The options are as follows:

     -f          Canonicalize the pathname of file, as described above.

     -n          Do not force a newline to appear after the output for each
                 file.

     -q          Suppress failure messages if calls to lstat(2) fail.  This is
                 the default for readlink.

     -s          This is an alternative to -q.

     -v          Turn off quiet mode.  readlink will display errors about
                 files for which lstat(2) fails, or without -f, which are not
                 symbolic links.  This is the inverse of -q and -s.


ENVIRONMENT

     POSIXLY_CORRECT  To obtain standards compliance, if POSIXLY_CORRECT is
                      set in the environment, then -v is the default, rather
                      than -q.


EXIT STATUS

     readlink will exit with status 1 on a usage error, or if any of the given
     file arguments do not exist, or if -f is absent and any file arguments do
     not name symbolic links.  Otherwise readlink exits with status 0.


SEE ALSO

     realpath(1), stat(1), lstat(2), readlink(2)


STANDARDS

     readlink is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 (``POSIX.1''),
     provided it is run with POSIXLY_CORRECT set in its environment.


HISTORY

     The readlink utility appeared along with stat, within which it is inte-
     grated, in NetBSD 1.6.


AUTHORS

     The stat utility was written by Andrew Brown <atatat@NetBSD.org>.  The
     original combined man page was written by Jan Schaumann
     <jschauma@NetBSD.org>.

NetBSD 10.99                      May 3, 2025                     NetBSD 10.99