Expand a possible relative path in bash

MY_PATH=$(readlink -f $YOUR_ARG) will resolve relative paths like "./" and "../"

Consider this as well (source):

#!/bin/bashdir_resolve(){cd "$1" 2>/dev/null || return $?  # cd to desired directory; if fail, quell any error messages but return exit statusecho "`pwd -P`" # output full, link-resolved path}# sample usageif abs_path="`dir_resolve \"$1\"`"thenecho "$1 resolves to $abs_path"echo pwd: `pwd` # function forks subshell, so working directory outside function is not affectedelseecho "Could not reach $1"fi

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/bash-script-return-full-path-and-filename-680368/page3.html has the following

function abspath {    if [[ -d "$1" ]]    then        pushd "$1" >/dev/null        pwd        popd >/dev/null    elif [[ -e "$1" ]]    then        pushd "$(dirname "$1")" >/dev/null        echo "$(pwd)/$(basename "$1")"        popd >/dev/null    else        echo "$1" does not exist! >&2        return 127    fi}

which uses pushd/popd to get into a state where pwd is useful.

Simple one-liner:

function abs_path {  (cd "$(dirname '$1')" &>/dev/null && printf "%s/%s" "$PWD" "${1##*/}")}

Usage:

function do_something {    local file=$(abs_path $1)    printf "Absolute path to %s: %s\n" "$1" "$file"}do_something $HOME/path/to/some\ where

I am still trying to figure out how I can get it to be completely oblivious to whether the path exists or not (so it can be used when creating files as well).