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?

Solution 1

I found it:

sudo apt-get install realpath

Then:

realpath MY_FILE

Solution 2

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

Solution 3

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.

Comments

[fugitive]

You can use locate command from mlocate package as well.

[George Vasiliou]

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.

[Rahul]

@GeorgeVasiliou Thanks for feedback. I'll update my answer.

[Stefan Falk]

Imho it's not necessary to install something for that kind of task ..

[Karl Morrison]

@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]

$ readlink -e README.md readlink: illegal option -- e usage: readlink [-n] [file ...]

[Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy]

@KarlMorrison Are you using Ubuntu ? Ubuntu uses GNU version of readlink which has that option. BSD and Mac os don't

[Stefan Falk]

Rahu and Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy already provided two answers which do not require the installation of an additional program. :)

[sleblanc]

realpath is part of coreutils, and as such should already be available on 99% of systems running Linux.