Judson's Notes

I have been trying to find a way to replace symbolic links with the files that they are pointed to. It turns out the solution required a little script:

#!/bin/bash
echo Processing $1
dir=$(dirname "$1")
reltarget=$(readlink "$1")
if [[ $reltarget == /* ]]; then
abstarget=$reltarget
else
abstarget=$dir/$reltarget
fi
 
rm -fv "$1"
cp -afv "$abstarget" "$1" || {
# on failure, restore the symlink
rm -rfv "$1"
ln -sfv "$reltarget" "$1"
}

Replace a link with its target by using the script like this:

ReplaceSymLink.sh file1

or in combination with the find command like this:

find -type l -exec ReplaceSymLink.sh {} \;

(assuming that you have placed the script somewhere that is in your executable search path)