Soft link pathname conversion for Linux and Unix

[John Horne]

On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 15:43 -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote:
> 
> In the file stuff section of your frozen food aisle, find out what fred 
> points to.
> 
> symval=$(ls -l fred | awk '{print $11}')
> 
Hi,

Thanks for the reply, but sorry this isn't going to work. As said, this
must work under Unix, and Solaris, for example, uses a standard Bourne
shell, not bash. Constructs such as 'symval=$(' won't work. (I can't
change shell either before anyone asks :-))

The solution must be completely generic of the operating system and the
shell. Basically if it works under the Bourne shell (not bash), then it
should work under any Linux and any Unix.


John.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK  Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: John.Horne at plymouth.ac.uk       Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839