When you do
cat some-symlink-to-some-real-file
it shows the contents of the real file, not what is within the symlink itself. Is there a way to see what's actually in it?
The ls -l
command will show you that:
$ ls -l foo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group 11 2010-12-31 19:49 foo -> /etc/passwd
Or the readlink
command:
$ readlink foo
/etc/passwd
So, the symbolic link foo
points to the path /etc/passwd
.