Bash script absolute path with OS X

Since there is a realpath as others have pointed out:

// realpath.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
  if (argc > 1) {
    for (int argIter = 1; argIter < argc; ++argIter) {
      char *resolved_path_buffer = NULL;
      char *result = realpath(argv[argIter], resolved_path_buffer);

      puts(result);

      if (result != NULL) {
        free(result);
      }
    }
  }

  return 0;
}

Makefile:

#Makefile
OBJ = realpath.o

%.o: %.c
      $(CC) -c -o $@ $< $(CFLAGS)

realpath: $(OBJ)
      gcc -o $@ $^ $(CFLAGS)

Then compile with make and put in a soft link with:
ln -s $(pwd)/realpath /usr/local/bin/realpath

abs_path () {    
   echo "$(cd $(dirname "$1");pwd)/$(basename "$1")"
}

dirname will give the directory name of /path/to/file, i.e. /path/to.

cd /path/to; pwd ensures that the path is absolute.

basename will give just the filename in /path/to/file, i.e.file.

I checked every answered, but missed the best one (IMHO) by Jason S Jul 14 '16 at 3:12, left the comment field.

So here it is, in case someone like me having the tendency to check answered and don't have time to go through every single comments:

$( cd "$(dirname "$0")" ; pwd -P )

Help:

NAME
     pwd -- return working directory name

SYNOPSIS
     pwd [-L | -P]

DESCRIPTION
     The pwd utility writes the absolute pathname of the current working
     directory to the standard output.

     Some shells may provide a builtin pwd command which is similar or identi-
     cal to this utility.  Consult the builtin(1) manual page.

     The options are as follows:

     -L      Display the logical current working directory.

     -P      Display the physical current working directory (all symbolic
             links resolved).

realpath for Mac OS X

realpath() {
    path=`eval echo "$1"`
    folder=$(dirname "$path")
    echo $(cd "$folder"; pwd)/$(basename "$path"); 
}

Example with related path:

realpath "../scripts/test.sh"

Example with home folder

realpath "~/Test/../Test/scripts/test.sh"

On macOS, the only solution that I've found to this that reliably handles symlinks is by using realpath. Since this requires brew install coreutils, I just automated that step. My implementation looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

if ! which realpath >&/dev/null; then
  if ! which brew >&/dev/null; then
    msg="ERROR: This script requires brew. See https://brew.sh for installation instructions."
    echo "$(tput setaf 1)$msg$(tput sgr0)" >&2
    exit 1
  fi
  echo "Installing coreutils/realpath"
  brew install coreutils >&/dev/null
fi

thisDir=$( dirname "`realpath "$0"`" )
echo "This script is run from \"$thisDir\""

This errors if they don't have brew installed, but you could alternatively just install that too. I just didn't feel comfortable automating something that curls arbitrary ruby code from the net.

Note that this an automated variation on Oleg Mikheev's answer.

One important test

One good test of any of these solutions is:

1. put the code in a script file somewhere
2. in another directory, symlink (ln -s) to that file
3. run the script from that symlink

Does the solution dereference the symlink, and give you the original directory? If so, it works.

This seems to work for OSX, doesnt require any binaries, and was pulled from here

function normpath() {
  # Remove all /./ sequences.
  local path=${1//\/.\//\/}

  # Remove dir/.. sequences.
  while [[ $path =~ ([^/][^/]*/\.\./) ]]; do
    path=${path/${BASH_REMATCH[0]}/}
  done
  echo $path
}

I like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
function realpath() {
    local _X="$PWD"
    local _LNK=$1
    cd "$(dirname "$_LNK")"
    if [ -h "$_LNK" ]; then
        _LNK="$(readlink "$_LNK")"
        cd "$(dirname "$_LNK")"
    fi
    echo "$PWD/$(basename "$_LNK")"
    cd "$_X"
}

I needed a realpath replacement on OS X, one that operates correctly on paths with symlinks and parent references just like readlink -f would. This includes resolving symlinks in the path before resolving parent references; e.g. if you have installed the homebrew coreutils bottle, then run:

$ ln -s /var/log/cups /tmp/linkeddir  # symlink to another directory
$ greadlink -f /tmp/linkeddir/..      # canonical path of the link parent
/private/var/log

Note that readlink -f has resolved /tmp/linkeddir before resolving the .. parent dir reference. Of course, there is no readlink -f on Mac either.

So as part of the a bash implementation for realpath I re-implemented what a GNUlib canonicalize_filename_mode(path, CAN_ALL_BUT_LAST) function call does, in Bash 3.2; this is also the function call that GNU readlink -f makes:

# shellcheck shell=bash
set -euo pipefail

_contains() {
    # return true if first argument is present in the other arguments
    local elem value

    value="$1"
    shift

    for elem in "$@"; do 
        if [[ $elem == "$value" ]]; then
            return 0
        fi
    done
    return 1
}

_canonicalize_filename_mode() {
    # resolve any symlink targets, GNU readlink -f style
    # where every path component except the last should exist and is
    # resolved if it is a symlink. This is essentially a re-implementation
    # of canonicalize_filename_mode(path, CAN_ALL_BUT_LAST).
    # takes the path to canonicalize as first argument

    local path result component seen
    seen=()
    path="$1"
    result="/"
    if [[ $path != /* ]]; then  # add in current working dir if relative
        result="$PWD"
    fi
    while [[ -n $path ]]; do
        component="${path%%/*}"
        case "$component" in
            '') # empty because it started with /
                path="${path:1}" ;;
            .)  # ./ current directory, do nothing
                path="${path:1}" ;;
            ..) # ../ parent directory
                if [[ $result != "/" ]]; then  # not at the root?
                    result="${result%/*}"      # then remove one element from the path
                fi
                path="${path:2}" ;;
            *)
                # add this component to the result, remove from path
                if [[ $result != */ ]]; then
                    result="$result/"
                fi
                result="$result$component"
                path="${path:${#component}}"
                # element must exist, unless this is the final component
                if [[ $path =~ [^/] && ! -e $result ]]; then
                    echo "$1: No such file or directory" >&2
                    return 1
                fi
                # if the result is a link, prefix it to the path, to continue resolving
                if [[ -L $result ]]; then
                    if _contains "$result" "${seen[@]+"${seen[@]}"}"; then
                        # we've seen this link before, abort
                        echo "$1: Too many levels of symbolic links" >&2
                        return 1
                    fi
                    seen+=("$result")
                    path="$(readlink "$result")$path"
                    if [[ $path = /* ]]; then
                        # if the link is absolute, restart the result from /
                        result="/"
                    elif [[ $result != "/" ]]; then
                        # otherwise remove the basename of the link from the result
                        result="${result%/*}"
                    fi
                elif [[ $path =~ [^/] && ! -d $result ]]; then
                    # otherwise all but the last element must be a dir
                    echo "$1: Not a directory" >&2
                    return 1
                fi
                ;;
        esac
    done
    echo "$result"
}

It includes circular symlink detection, exiting if the same (intermediary) path is seen twice.

If all you need is readlink -f, then you can use the above as:

readlink() {
    if [[ $1 != -f ]]; then  # poor-man's option parsing
        # delegate to the standard readlink command
        command readlink "$@"
        return
    fi

    local path result seenerr
    shift
    seenerr=
    for path in "$@"; do
        # by default readlink suppresses error messages
        if ! result=$(_canonicalize_filename_mode "$path" 2>/dev/null); then
            seenerr=1
            continue
        fi
        echo "$result"
    done
    if [[ $seenerr ]]; then
        return 1;
    fi
}

For realpath, I also needed --relative-to and --relative-base support, which give you relative paths after canonicalizing:

_realpath() {
    # GNU realpath replacement for bash 3.2 (OS X)
    # accepts --relative-to= and --relative-base options
    # and produces canonical (relative or absolute) paths for each
    # argument on stdout, errors on stderr, and returns 0 on success
    # and 1 if at least 1 path triggered an error.

    local relative_to relative_base seenerr path

    relative_to=
    relative_base=
    seenerr=

    while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
        case $1 in
            "--relative-to="*)
                relative_to=$(_canonicalize_filename_mode "${1#*=}")
                shift 1;;
            "--relative-base="*)
                relative_base=$(_canonicalize_filename_mode "${1#*=}")
                shift 1;;
            *)
                break;;
        esac
    done

    if [[
        -n $relative_to
        && -n $relative_base
        && ${relative_to#${relative_base}/} == "$relative_to"
    ]]; then
        # relative_to is not a subdir of relative_base -> ignore both
        relative_to=
        relative_base=
    elif [[ -z $relative_to && -n $relative_base ]]; then
        # if relative_to has not been set but relative_base has, then
        # set relative_to from relative_base, simplifies logic later on
        relative_to="$relative_base"
    fi

    for path in "$@"; do
        if ! real=$(_canonicalize_filename_mode "$path"); then
            seenerr=1
            continue
        fi

        # make path relative if so required
        if [[
            -n $relative_to
            && ( # path must not be outside relative_base to be made relative
                -z $relative_base || ${real#${relative_base}/} != "$real"
            )
        ]]; then
            local common_part parentrefs

            common_part="$relative_to"
            parentrefs=
            while [[ ${real#${common_part}/} == "$real" ]]; do
                common_part="$(dirname "$common_part")"
                parentrefs="..${parentrefs:+/$parentrefs}"
            done

            if [[ $common_part != "/" ]]; then
                real="${parentrefs:+${parentrefs}/}${real#${common_part}/}"
            fi
        fi

        echo "$real"
    done
    if [[ $seenerr ]]; then
        return 1
    fi
}

if ! command -v realpath > /dev/null 2>&1; then
    # realpath is not available on OSX unless you install the `coreutils` brew
    realpath() { _realpath "$@"; }
fi

I included unit tests in my Code Review request for this code.

For those nodejs developers in a mac using bash:

realpath() {
  node -p "fs.realpathSync('$1')"
}

Just an idea of using pushd:

realpath() {
  eval echo "$(pushd $(dirname "$1") | cut -d' ' -f1)/$(basename "$1")
}"

The eval is used to expand tilde such as ~/Downloads.

Based on the communication with commenter, I agreed that it is very hard and has no trival way to implement a realpath behaves totally same as Ubuntu.

But the following version, can handle corner cases best answer can't and satisfy my daily needs on macbook. Put this code into your ~/.bashrc and remember:

• arg can only be 1 file or dir, no wildcard
• no spaces in the dir or file name
• at least the file or dir's parent dir exists
• feel free to use . .. / thing, these are safe

    # 1. if is a dir, try cd and pwd
    # 2. if is a file, try cd its parent and concat dir+file
    realpath() {
     [ "$1" = "" ] && return 1

     dir=`dirname "$1"`
     file=`basename "$1"`

     last=`pwd`

     [ -d "$dir" ] && cd $dir || return 1
     if [ -d "$file" ];
     then
       # case 1
       cd $file && pwd || return 1
     else
       # case 2
       echo `pwd`/$file | sed 's/\/\//\//g'
     fi

     cd $last
    }