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

[felix]

On Sun, Sep 05, 2021 at 11:54:05PM -0400, Lawrence Velázquez wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 5, 2021, at 11:11 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote:

> > > ... I was wondering, is there a way for bash to know where the 
> > > symlink points (without using an external program)?
> 
> The distribution ships with a "realpath" loadable builtin, FWIW.
>     bash-5.1$ enable -f /opt/local/lib/bash/realpath realpath
>     bash-5.1$ realpath /usr/bin/cc
>     /usr/bin/clang

I think this answer the need, but using this to populate a variable implie
anyway a fork.

  realPathArray=$(realpath /bin/sh /usr/bin/X)

It would be nice if builtins intended to produce *answer* use more or less
common switch like `printf -v` behaviour.

  usage: realpath [-a array] [-csv] pathname [pathname...]

  options:     -a NAME assign the output to shell array NAME rather than
                       display it on the standard output
               -c      check whether or not each resolved path exists
               -s      no output, exit status determines whether path is valid
               -v      produce verbose output



-- 
 Félix Hauri  -  <felix@f-hauri.ch>  -  http://www.f-hauri.ch