Re: New coreutil? realpath - retrieve canonicalized absolute path

[P]

Sebastian Rasmussen wrote:
> > > Below is a patch (against coreutils-cvs) that
> > > implements a new coreutil of mine, realpath, that
> > > more or less wraps the libc call realpath(3). This
> > > is done in order to allow shell scripts or users
> > > to retrieve an absolute path given a relative
> > > path.
> >
> > What's wrong with the already-existing `readlink -f'?
>
>
> Besides me not knowing that it existed, nothing.
> It appears to give exactly the same results as
> my realpath does. The manpage could state that
> readlink performs canonicalization on links as
> well as normal paths. That way I wouldn't have
> missed it when searching for a suitable command.
> Would a patch updating the manpage be suitable?

"How do I canonicalize a path" is a common question
in my experience, so making `readlink -f` better known
with documentation would help.
It would be great if `apropos canonicalize` returned it.

For the record I have `alias realpath='readlink -f'`.
Also FreeBSD has a realpath util as of 4.3

--
Pádraig Brady - http://www.pixelbeat.org
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