Symbolic Links

[Anonymous Monk]

I am trying to write a script that finds directories that are symbolically linked to accounts and then displays where that symbolic link is.
Is there a function of perl that displays where directories are linked?

I just want to avoid using something like:

open (SYMDIR, "cd /some/directory | pwd |");
print SYMDIR;

Well, actually there are other ways than that... But anyway, any help would be appreciated =)

[grinder]

You want to investigate the readlink function.
 my $dir = readlink( '/some/directory' );

If you have symbolic links pointing to other symbolic links you will have to walk down the chain:

while( -l $dir ) {
  $dir = readlink $dir
}

or more concise:

  1 while( -l $dir and $dir=readlink($dir))

--

g r i n d e r

[merlyn]

No, that's insufficient. See my column on that.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[nardo]

You can use readlink to read where a symlink points, but it won't necessarily be the final destination since it can point to another symlink.