How to follow a symbolic/soft link in cmd or PowerShell?

Question

My searches have only shown me how to create symbolic links using mklink in cmd. I have seen some things saying to use readlink, but PowerShell and cmd don't know what readlink is, and cd obviously doesn't work. So how do I follow one?

Answer 1

To avoid confusion stemming from your question:

• Windows shortcut files (*.lnk files), which are a feature of the Windows (GUI) shell, are distinct from symbolic links (symlinks), which are a feature of the (NTFS) filesystem.

• Shortcut files - which you are interested in - store the path of a file or folder they point to inside the file, which is why:

  • You cannot directly cd to a shortcut file's target folder, because filesystem commands such as cd know nothing about the content of files.
  • You must read the content of the shortcut file to determine its target, which you can then pass to cd or Set-Location (in PowerShell).

  • The file format of shortcut file is a binary one that can be read via an in-box COM component that exposes Windows shell functionality; e.g., to determine the target folder of a shortcut file named Samples.lnk and change to that folder, use PowerShell:

    # NOTE: * Despite the name "CreateShortcut()", the method is also
    #         used to *read* shortcut files.
    #       * Prefixing the filename with "$PWD/" is needed in order
    #         to target a file in the current directory, because
    #         the method doesn't know what PowerShell's current dir. is.
    cd (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell).CreateShortcut("$PWD/Samples.lnk").TargetPath
    

• Symlinks, by contrast:

  • (typically) transparently redirect to their target, i.e., the filesystem item (file or folder) they point to.

  • You can therefore use cd directly with a symlink to a folder, but note that it is still the symlink's path that is shown.

  • To print a symlink's target - akin to what the readlink utility does on Unix-like platforms - use PowerShell; e.g., to print the target of a symlink named Samples in the current directory:

     (Get-Item Samples).Target
    
     # Or, after running `cd Samples`:
     (Get-Item .).Target
    

  • Note that it's not straightforward to get a symlink's target in cmd.exe, but if you use
    dir /al <link-path>*, the listing will also show the link's target path, after the name, enclosed in [...]; note that the trailing * is necessary in order to show information about the link itself, not its target's contents; note that, although unlikely, that may match other links that start with the same path as well.

---

Unlike shortcut files, symlinks are still rare in the Windows world, not least because prior to Windows 10 they invariably required admin privileges to create; in Windows 10, if developer mode is enabled (by an administrator), even non-administrative users / non-elevated processes can now create symlinks - see https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/, which also explains why symlinks are likely to see increasing usage in the future.

Answer 2

For your question i made this batch file:

mkdir truedir
dir > truedir\fileone.txt
mklink /d symdir truedir
cd symdir
dir

And i have found no problem to get the content of the symblic link to a directory from command prompt. No problem also with powershell 5.1 (win 10):

Get-ChildItem C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\Desktop\test2\symdir

Can you give us a code example (batch or powershell is the same) to replicate your problem?

Answer 3

Okay I just posted this answer in another similar question so I figured I'd post it here too. I wish this one had come up in a search like the other question did because @mklement0's answer is great. But here is my solution that is able to follow nested links to the true file or directory in PowerShell (I was looking for a PS-specific solution, not CMD).

So far the double-cd approach is the most reliable/universal I can find for handling a situation of mixed relative/absolute paths in the filenames and targets, and I tested several scenarios.

function getLinkTarget($fn) {
    $op=$PWD #Save original path
    while($t=(Get-Item $fn).Target) { #Get link target
        cd (Split-Path -Parent $fn) #cd to parent of file/dir
        cd (Split-Path -Parent $t) #cd again to parent of target
        $fn=(Split-Path -Leaf $t) #Set filename to relative target
    }
    $fn=(Join-Path $PWD $fn) #Make path absolute
    cd $op #Change back to original path
    return $fn
}