Show full path to file in terminal

Question

I have a file. I'd like to echo out the full path to it in the terminal.

Which command would?

score 27 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 13 '17 at 13:52

27

Use readlink with -e flag. Not only it gives you full path to file, it also presents real path of the symlinks

$ readlink -e ./out.txt                                                                                                  
/home/xieerqi/out.txt

I personally use it in my own scripts whenever it's necessary to get full path of a file

answered Jan 13 '17 at 13:52

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy

103,293
19
273
492

1

$ readlink -e README.md readlink: illegal option -- e usage: readlink [-n] [file ...] – Karl Morrison Nov 27 '18 at 12:09
@KarlMorrison Are you using Ubuntu ? Ubuntu uses GNU version of readlink which has that option. BSD and Mac os don't – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Nov 27 '18 at 12:13

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 13 '17 at 13:14

10

I found it:

sudo apt-get install realpath

Then:

realpath MY_FILE

answered Jan 13 '17 at 13:14

Karl Morrison

9,116
22
58
91

4

You can use `locate` command from `mlocate` package as well. – fugitive Jan 13 '17 at 13:15
Imho it's not necessary to install something for *that* kind of task .. – Stefan Falk Nov 27 '18 at 09:17
@StefanFalk Care to answer with a very easy solution then?) I don't like this either but it's quick and shows me what I need. – Karl Morrison Nov 27 '18 at 12:08
Rahu and Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy already provided two answers which do not require the installation of an additional program. :) – Stefan Falk Nov 27 '18 at 13:39
`realpath` is part of coreutils, and as such should already be available on 99% of systems running Linux. – sleblanc Jun 18 '20 at 04:19

Rahul · Answer 3 · 2017-01-13T13:36:49.813

5

If you don't know the location of the file use find command.

find / -name MY_FILE

It will print full path of MY_FILE starting from /.

or you can use find $PWD -name MY_FILE to search in current directory.

If you know the location of MY_FILE then go to folder containg MY_FILE and use

pwd command to print the full path of MY_FILE.

edited Jan 13 '17 at 13:36

answered Jan 13 '17 at 13:29

Rahul

1,643
1
12
21

2

For searchin in current directory you can also use `find $PWD -name` instead of `find . -name`, and all the resutls will include the real path instead of the `./` symbol. – George Vasiliou Jan 13 '17 at 13:32
@GeorgeVasiliou Thanks for feedback. I'll update my answer. – Rahul Jan 13 '17 at 13:35

Olivier Dulac · Answer 4 · 2017-01-13T14:44:56.050

Here is a function to show paths to files, you may just need the "fpath=...." part ?

pathtofile () { : "gives full path to files given in parameters.";
  for f in "$@"; do
    fpath="$(
      cd -P "$(dirname "$f")" && \
      printf '%s\n' "$(pwd)/$(basename "${f}")" || \
      { echo "__An error occured while determining path to file: '${f}'."\
             "Maybe your user can't access its directory, most likely?__"
      }  )"
    printf "Full path to: %s\n          is: %s\n" "'${f}'" "'${fpath}'";
  done
}

Use with:

pathtofile   file1  ../file2  /some/pathwithsymlink/file3

The important part: cd -P somedir : shows the full "real" path to somedir.

Show full path to file in terminal

4 Answers4

Linked