debian man page for realpath

REALPATH(1)							      Debian							       REALPATH(1)

NAME
       realpath - return the canonicalised absolute pathname

SYNOPSIS
       realpath [-s|--strip] [-z|--zero]  filename  ...
       realpath --h|--help
       realpath --v|--version

DESCRIPTION
       realpath  converts  each filename argument to an absolute pathname, which has no components that are symbolic links or the special .  or ..
       directory entries.  (See realpath(3) for more information.)
       Each path component in the filename must exist, otherwise realpath will fail and non-zero exit status will be returned.
       Please note that mostly the same functionality is provided by the `-e'  option of the readlink(1) command.

       When the -s option is used realpath only removes the .  and ..  directories, but not symbolic links from filename.  If the  given  filename
       argument  is relative (i.e.  does not start with `/'), realpath -s prepends to it the current directory name as obtained from the getcwd(2)
       system call before further processing.

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

OPTIONS
       -s, --strip
	    Only strip .  and .., components, but do not resolve symbolic links.

       -z, --zero
	    Separate output filenames with the null character instead of newline, so it can be used with the `-0' option of xargs(1).

       -h, --help
	    Print short usage information.

       -v, --version
	    Show realpath's version number.

EXAMPLES
       For the examples below let's suppose that /usr/bin/X11 is a symbolic link, pointing to directory /usr/bin.

   Example 1
       Regardless of what the current directory is
	   realpath /../usr/bin/X11/./xterm
       prints
	   /usr/bin/xterm
       but
	   realpath -s /../usr/bin/X11/./xterm
       outputs
	   /usr/bin/X11/xterm

   Example 2
       When the current directory is /usr/bin/X11 (which is still a symbolic link to /usr/bin), the output of both
	   realpath ./xterm
       and
	   realpath  -s ./xterm
       will be
	   /usr/bin/xterm

   Example 3
       Providing that the current directory is /home/user (and the directory exists before and during the realpath run), the  command
	   realpath ../path/to/some/./non-existent/./directory/../or/../file
       will fail with the following error
	   ../path/to/some/./non-existent/./directory/../or/../file: No such file or directory
       but
	   realpath -s ../path/to/some/./non-existent/./directory/../or/../file
       will return
	   /home/path/to/some/non-existent/file

EXIT STATUS
       realpath returns a zero exit code when all pathnames 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.

SEE ALSO
       basename(1), dirname(1), readlink(1), chase(1), realpath(3)

BUGS
       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.txt in
       the package doc-debian or the reportbug(1) man page.

AUTHOR
       Originally written by Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>, as a part of the dwww package.  Robert Luberda <robert@debian.org>  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.

Debian								October 16th, 2011						       REALPATH(1)