Greg Wooledge wrote:
> That leaves names which contain ->. The tricky part here is that we
> can't easily tell whether an extra -> is in the symbolic link or in
> the target.
>
> imadev:~$ ln -s tmp 'x -> y'
> imadev:~$ ln -s 'y -> tmp' x
> imadev:~$ ls -ld x*
> lrwxr-xr-x 1 wooledg pgmr 8 Feb 12 09:28 x -> y -> tmp
> lrwxr-xr-x 1 wooledg pgmr 3 Feb 12 09:28 x -> y -> tmp
>
> However, there actually is enough information available to extract
> the desired part. When we call ls -l, we're passing it the filename
> we're resolving. So we already know the source name. Removing the
> source name and the ' -> ' which follows it should leave us with the
> target name.
>
> link=$(command ls -l -- "$file"; printf x)
> link=${link%$'\nx'}
> remove="$file -> "
> file=${link#*$remove}
Your solution using the original filename is better but I thought I
would point out that the size of the target value is also displayed by
'ls -l'. In the above the value "tmp" is 3 characters and "y -> tmp"
is 8 characters and that value is displayed in the size field. So
even without knowing the filename to be listed the result can be
parsed to extract the target name.
Bob
