Re: equivalent of Linux readlink -f in pure bash?

[Steven W. Orr]

On 8/9/2011 5:29 AM, Bernd Eggink wrote:
> On 09.08.2011 03:44, Jon Seymour wrote:
> > Has anyone ever come across an equivalent to Linux's readlink -f that
> > is implemented purely in bash?
>
> You can find my version here:
>
> http://sudrala.de/en_d/shell-getlink.html
>
> As it contains some corrections from Greg Wooledge, it should handle even
> pathological situations. ;)
>
> Bernd

I'd just like to make a couple of suggestions for  your script (I hope these 
are welcome):

*) You reset OPTIND to 1 but you didn't declare it local. This will cause any 
caller of getlink which uses getopts to reset its variable to 1. (I mention 
this because it cost me a couple of hours a while back.)

When calling getopts, especially from a function that is intended to not be 
used at a top level for processing command line options, you should declare 
local copies of OPTIND, OPTARG and OPTERR.

*) To remove the trailing slashes, instead of

            while [[ $file == */ ]]
            do
                file=${file%/}
            done

            file=${file##*/}    # file name

just say
            file="${file%${file##*[!/]}}"

*) Instead of

          [[ ! -d $dir ]] &&
            {
                ret=1
                break
            }

how about this for slightly cleaner?

          [[ -d $dir ]] ||
            {
                ret=1
                break
            }

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