Readlink

Readlink shows the destination of a symbolic link. For instance, if one has a file named "lsc" which links to "/bin/ls": $ readlink lsc /bin/ls

A command that this author has frequently found useful is: $ readlink filename | awk -F/ '{ print $NF }'

This will print the filename of the file to which the link is pointing. To find the name of the driver of your ethernet card, for example: $ readlink /sys/class/net/eth0/driver | awk -F/ '{ print $NF }'

= Provided by =

Most (all?) Linux distributions incorporate this from the GNU Coreutils: man page

= Related Commands =
 * link - Make hard links.
 * ln - Make hard or soft links
 * mkdir - Make directory nodes.
 * mkfifo - Make a named pipe directory entry (aka fifo)
 * mknod - Make a device node, or a socket node.
 * rmdir - Remove empty directories.
 * unlink - Remove directory entries (other than for subdirectories)

= See also =
 * Another man page of readlink
 * awk - Scan and process patterns in text.
 * User's Guide of GNU Awk (online or downloadable)