lnptr

#!/bin/sh
#######################################
## Hand in a symlink, get back its (end) target
## Usage: lnptr FILE [FILE...]
## lnptr 0.1, Copyright (c) 2003 by Adam Katz <[email protected]>, GPL
#######################################

# ensure we have a string and it is a file or directory
[ -z "$1" ] && exit 0
[ -f "$1" ] || [ -d "$1" ] || if echo $1 |grep '^-' >/dev/null
  then grep '^## ' `which $0 2>/dev/null || echo $0` |sed 's/^...//' && exit 0
  else echo "`echo $0|sed 's:.*/::g'`: $1: No such file or directory" && exit 1
fi  # (solaris 5.9's /bin/sh doesn't like `[ -e filename ]')
pointer="$1"

while true; do

  this="$pointer"

  pointer=`ls -l "$this" |awk '{print $11}'` # link target (empty if not a link)
  [ -z "$pointer" ] && break                 # if not a link, we're done

  if echo "$pointer" |grep -v '^/' >/dev/null; then
    pdir=`dirname "$this"`
    pointer="$pdir/$pointer"                 # make absolute
  fi

done

cd `dirname "$this"`                         # get rid of ../.. etc w/out sed

echo "`pwd`/`echo $this |sed 's:^.*/::g'`"   # the answer!

[ -n "$2" ] && shift && "$0" "$@"            # call this on remaining arguments