Re: ?maybe? RFE?... read -h <symlink>?

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Sun, Sep 5, 2021, at 11:11 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote:
> L A Walsh <bash@tlinx.org> writes:
> > I know how -h can detect a symlink, but I was wondering, is
> > there a way for bash to know where the symlink points (without
> > using an external program)?
> 
> My understanding is that it has been convention to use the "readlink"
> program for a very long time, so there's never been much demand to add
> it to bash.  Of course, looking at the options to readlink shows that
> there are several different meanings of "where a symlink points".

The distribution ships with a "realpath" loadable builtin, FWIW.

    bash-5.1$ enable -f /opt/local/lib/bash/realpath realpath
    bash-5.1$ type realpath
    realpath is a shell builtin
    bash-5.1$ readlink /usr/bin/cc
    clang
    bash-5.1$ realpath /usr/bin/cc
    /usr/bin/clang

-- 
vq