dirs_links/view_symlink.cThis is dirs_links/view_symlink.c (Listing 18-4, page 369), an example from the book, The Linux Programming Interface. The source code file is copyright 2024, Michael Kerrisk, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3. This page shows the "distribution" or "book" version of the file (why are there two versions?), or the differences between the two versions. You can switch between the views using the tabs below. In the listing below, the names of Linux system calls and C library functions are hyperlinked to manual pages from the Linux man-pages project, and the names of functions implemented in the book are hyperlinked to the implementations of those functions.
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/* view_symlink.c Demonstrate the use of readlink() and realpath() to read and display the contents of a symbolic link. */ #include <sys/stat.h> #include <limits.h> /* For definition of PATH_MAX */ #include "tlpi_hdr.h" #define BUF_SIZE PATH_MAX
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { struct stat statbuf; char buf[BUF_SIZE]; ssize_t numBytes; if (argc != 2 || strcmp(argv[1], "--help") == 0) usageErr("%s pathname\n", argv[0]); /* User lstat() to check whether the supplied pathname is a symbolic link. Alternatively, we could have checked to whether readlink() failed with EINVAL. */ if (lstat(argv[1], &statbuf) == -1) errExit("lstat"); if (!S_ISLNK(statbuf.st_mode)) fatal("%s is not a symbolic link", argv[1]); numBytes = readlink(argv[1], buf, BUF_SIZE - 1); if (numBytes == -1) errExit("readlink"); buf[numBytes] = '\0'; /* Add terminating null byte */ printf("readlink: %s --> %s\n", argv[1], buf); if (realpath(argv[1], buf) == NULL) errExit("realpath"); printf("realpath: %s --> %s\n", argv[1], buf); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); }
Note that, in most cases, the programs rendered in these web pages are not free standing: you'll typically also need a few other source files (mostly in the lib/ subdirectory) as well. Generally, it's easier to just download the entire source tarball and build the programs with make(1). By hovering your mouse over the various hyperlinked include files and function calls above, you can see which other source files this file depends on.