realpath (1)

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NAME

realpath - return the canonicalised absolute pathname

SYNOPSIS

realpath [-s|--strip] [-z|--zero] filename ...
realpath --h|--help
realpath --v|--version

DESCRIPTION

realpath converts each filename argument to an absolute pathname, which has no components that are symbolic links or the special . or .. directory entries. (See realpath(3) for more information.)
Each path component in the filename must exist, otherwise realpath will fail and non-zero exit status will be returned.
Please note that mostly the same functionality is provided by the `-e' option of the readlink(1) command.

When the -s option is used realpath only removes the . and .. directories, but not symbolic links from filename. If the given filename argument is relative (i.e. does not start with `/'), realpath -s prepends to it the current directory name as obtained from the getcwd(2) system call before further processing.

Each converted pathname is output to the standard output, on its own line.

OPTIONS

-s, --strip

Only strip . and .., components, but do not resolve symbolic links.

-z, --zero

Separate output filenames with the null character instead of newline, so it can be used with the `-0' option of xargs(1).

-h, --help

Print short usage information.

-v, --version

Show realpath's version number.

EXAMPLES

For the examples below let's suppose that /usr/bin/X11 is a symbolic link, pointing to directory /usr/bin.

Example 1

Regardless of what the current directory is

realpath /../usr/bin/X11/./xterm

prints

/usr/bin/xterm

but

realpath -s /../usr/bin/X11/./xterm

outputs

/usr/bin/X11/xterm

Example 2

When the current directory is /usr/bin/X11 (which is still a symbolic link to /usr/bin), the output of both

realpath ./xterm

and

realpath  -s ./xterm

will be

/usr/bin/xterm

Example 3

Providing that the current directory is /home/user (and the directory exists before and during the realpath run), the command

realpath ../path/to/some/./non-existent/./directory/../or/../file

will fail with the following error

../path/to/some/./non-existent/./directory/../or/../file: No such file or directory

but

realpath -s ../path/to/some/./non-existent/./directory/../or/../file

will return

/home/path/to/some/non-existent/file

EXIT STATUS

realpath returns a zero exit code when all pathnames were successfully converted.
In case of any errors (e.g. missing or unavailable directories in the path), realpath prints error message to stderr and returns a non-zero exit code.

SEE ALSO

basename(1), dirname(1), readlink(1), chase(1), realpath(3)

BUGS

Hopefully none :)
If you find some, please report them via the normal Debian bug reporting system, see the file /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt in the package doc-debian or the reportbug(1) man page.

AUTHOR

Originally written by Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>, as a part of the dwww package. Robert Luberda <robert@debian.org> currently maintains and extends it.

realpath is licensed via the GNU General Public License. While it has been written for Debian, porting it to other systems is strongly encouraged.

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