How do I get the target of a symlink?

ruby symlink
kch picture kch · Aug 6, 2009 · Viewed 19.7k times · Source

I have a string containing the file system path to an existing symlink. I want to get the path that this link points to.

Basically I want the same that I'd get through this bit of hackery:

s = "path/to/existing/symlink"
`ls -ld #{s}`.scan(/-> (.+)/).flatten.last

but I want to do it without shelling out.

Answer

Inshallah picture Inshallah · Aug 6, 2009

I think readlink is what you are looking for:

File.readlink("path/to/symlink")

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