Shell Programming and Scripting

mv /dir1/dir2/link /dir1/dir2/target_v01

/dir1/dir2/target_v01 -> /some/dir/target

ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving pathname, or O_NOFOLLOW was specified but pathname was a symbolic link

readlink() {
  [ -h "$1" ] &&
  ls -ld "$1" | sed -n 's/.* -> //p'
}

if target=`readlink /dir1/dir2/link` && [ -f "$target" ]
then
   echo mv "$target" "$target"_v01
fi

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
    char buffer[ 32 * 1024 ];
    ssize_t result = readlink( argv[ 1 ], buffer, sizeof( buffer ) );
    if ( result > 0 )
    {
        printf( "%s\n", buffer );
        return( 0 );
    }
    return( -1 );
}

cc readlink.c -o readlink