Man page 1 : realpath

realpath - return the canonicalised absolute pathname

" filename " ...

realpath converts each filenameargument to an absolute pathname, which has no components that are symbolic links or the special

. or

.. directory entries. (See

R realpath (3) for more information.)
Please note that mostly the same functionality is provided by the `-f' option of the

R readlink (1) command.

When the

-s option is used

realpath only removes the

. and

.. directories, but not symbolic links from filename . If the given filenameargument is relative (i.e. does not start with ` / '),

realpath -s prepends to it the current directory name as obtained from the

R getcwd (2) system call before further processing.

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

• 
       Only strip

. and

R .. , components, but do not resolve symbolic links.

• 
       Separate output filenames with the null character instead of newline, so it can be used with the ` -0 ' option of

R xargs (1).

• 
       Print short usage information.
• 
       Show

R realpath 's version number.

For the examples below let's suppose that /usr/bin/X11is a symbolic link, pointing to directory /usr/bin .

5.1. Example 1 ▲

5.2. Example 2 ▲

5.3. Example 3 ▲

realpath returns a zero exit code when allpathnames 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.

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.txtin the package doc-debian or the

R reportbug (1) man page.

Originally written by Lars Wirzenius <>, as a part of the dwww package. Robert Luberda <> 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.