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.Dd June 22, 2022 .Dt READLINK 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm readlink .Nd display target of a symbolic link .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl fnqsv .Op Ar .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility displays the target of a symbolic link. If a given argument .Ar file is not a symbolic link and the .Fl f option is not specified, .Nm readlink will print nothing to standard output about that .Ar file and eventually exit with an error status. If the .Fl f option is specified, the output is canonicalized by following every symlink in every component of the given path recursively. .Nm will resolve both absolute and relative paths, and, if possible, return the absolute pathname corresponding to .Ar file . In this case, the argument does not need to be a symbolic link.
p The options are as follows: l -tag -width XFXXX t Fl f Canonicalize the pathname of .Ar file , as described above. t Fl n Do not force a newline to appear after the output for each .Ar file . t Fl q Suppress failure messages if calls to .Xr lstat 2 fail. This is the default for .Nm readlink . t Fl s This is an alternative to .Fl q . t Fl v Turn off quiet mode. .Nm will display errors about .Ar file Ns s for which .Xr lstat 2 fails. This is the inverse of .Fl q and .Fl s . .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr stat 1 , .Xr lstat 2 , .Xr readlink 2 . .Sh HISTORY The .Nm utility appeared along with .Nm stat , within which it is integrated, in .Nx 1.6 . .Sh AUTHORS .An -nosplit The .Nm stat utility was written by .An Andrew Brown .Aq atatat@NetBSD.org . The original combined man page was written by .An Jan Schaumann .Aq jschauma@NetBSD.org .