How do I get the target of a symlink?

Question

I have a string containing the file system path to an existing symlink. I want to get the path that this link points to.

Basically I want the same that I'd get through this bit of hackery:

s = "path/to/existing/symlink"
`ls -ld #{s}`.scan(/-> (.+)/).flatten.last

but I want to do it without shelling out.

Incidentally, in bash it's also just `readlink path/to/symlink`. Never parse the output of `ls`. — OrangeDog, Dec 21 '15 at 17:13

score 70 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '09 at 09:55

70

I think readlink is what you are looking for:

File.readlink("path/to/symlink")

answered Aug 06 '09 at 09:55

Inshallah

16

Note that if the symlink is relative or there is a chain of symlinks, this will not follow all the links or return the full path -Pathname#realpath will. – mfazekas Sep 18 '09 at 15:43
@mfazekas, thank you for pointing this out; I wonder whether that's really what the OP wanted though; `ls -ld ...` doesn't give the real path either. – Inshallah Sep 18 '09 at 16:25

score 48 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 06 '09 at 09:56

48

require 'pathname'
Pathname.new("symlink").realpath

or readlink as others said

answered Aug 06 '09 at 09:56

piotrsz

3

rather Pathname.new("/path/to/symlink").realpath.to_s :) .. this is definitely better than using system() – Rishav Rastogi Aug 06 '09 at 09:59

Juan Ibiapina · Answer 3 · 2014-08-14T14:31:33.673

16

Or you can try:

File.realpath("symlink_path")

Which works for both symlinks and normal files.

edited Aug 14 '14 at 14:31

answered Aug 14 '14 at 14:13

Juan Ibiapina

3 Answers3