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NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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readlink(2) System Calls Manual readlink(2)
readlink, readlinkat - read value of a symbolic link
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <unistd.h>
ssize_t readlink(size_t bufsiz;
const char *restrict path,
char buf[restrict bufsiz], size_t bufsiz);
#include <fcntl.h> /* Definition of AT_* constants */
#include <unistd.h>
ssize_t readlinkat(size_t bufsiz;
int dirfd, const char *restrict path,
char buf[restrict bufsiz], size_t bufsiz);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
feature_test_macros(7)):
readlink():
_XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L
|| /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE
readlinkat():
Since glibc 2.10:
_POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
Before glibc 2.10:
_ATFILE_SOURCE
readlink() places the contents of the symbolic link path in the
buffer buf, which has size bufsiz. readlink() does not append a
terminating null byte to buf. It will (silently) truncate the
contents (to a length of bufsiz characters), in case the buffer is
too small to hold all of the contents.
readlinkat()
The readlinkat() system call operates in exactly the same way as
readlink(), except for the differences described here.
If path is relative, then it is interpreted relative to the
directory referred to by the file descriptor dirfd (rather than
relative to the current working directory of the calling process,
as is done by readlink() for a relative pathname).
If path is relative and dirfd is the special value AT_FDCWD, then
path is interpreted relative to the current working directory of
the calling process (like readlink()).
If path is absolute, then dirfd is ignored.
Since Linux 2.6.39, path can be an empty string, in which case the
call operates on the symbolic link referred to by dirfd (which
should have been obtained using open(2) with the O_PATH and
O_NOFOLLOW flags).
See openat(2) for an explanation of the need for readlinkat().
On success, these calls return the number of bytes placed in buf.
(If the returned value equals bufsiz, then truncation may have
occurred.) On error, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate
the error.
EACCES Search permission is denied for a component of the path
prefix. (See also path_resolution(7).)
EBADF (readlinkat()) path is relative but dirfd is neither
AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor.
EFAULT buf extends outside the process's allocated address space.
EINVAL bufsiz is not positive.
EINVAL The named file (i.e., the final filename component of path)
is not a symbolic link.
EIO An I/O error occurred while reading from the filesystem.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the
pathname.
ENAMETOOLONG
A pathname, or a component of a pathname, was too long.
ENOENT The named file does not exist.
ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
ENOTDIR
(readlinkat()) path is relative and dirfd is a file
descriptor referring to a file other than a directory.
POSIX.1-2008.
readlink()
4.4BSD (first appeared in 4.2BSD), POSIX.1-2001,
POSIX.1-2008.
readlinkat()
POSIX.1-2008. Linux 2.6.16, glibc 2.4.
Up to and including glibc 2.4, the return type of readlink() was
declared as int. Nowadays, the return type is declared as
ssize_t, as (newly) required in POSIX.1-2001.
glibc
On older kernels where readlinkat() is unavailable, the glibc
wrapper function falls back to the use of readlink(). When path
is relative, glibc constructs a pathname based on the symbolic
link in /proc/self/fd that corresponds to the dirfd argument.
Using a statically sized buffer might not provide enough room for
the symbolic link contents. The required size for the buffer can
be obtained from the stat.st_size value returned by a call to
lstat(2) on the link. However, the number of bytes written by
readlink() and readlinkat() should be checked to make sure that
the size of the symbolic link did not increase between the calls.
Dynamically allocating the buffer for readlink() and readlinkat()
also addresses a common portability problem when using PATH_MAX
for the buffer size, as this constant is not guaranteed to be
defined per POSIX if the system does not have such limit.
The following program allocates the buffer needed by readlink()
dynamically from the information provided by lstat(2), falling
back to a buffer of size PATH_MAX in cases where lstat(2) reports
a size of zero.
#include <limits.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *buf;
ssize_t nbytes, bufsiz;
struct stat sb;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <path>\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (lstat(argv[1], &sb) == -1) {
perror("lstat");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
/* Add one to the link size, so that we can determine whether
the buffer returned by readlink() was truncated. */
bufsiz = sb.st_size + 1;
/* Some magic symlinks under (for example) /proc and /sys
report 'st_size' as zero. In that case, take PATH_MAX as
a "good enough" estimate. */
if (sb.st_size == 0)
bufsiz = PATH_MAX;
buf = malloc(bufsiz);
if (buf == NULL) {
perror("malloc");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
nbytes = readlink(argv[1], buf, bufsiz);
if (nbytes == -1) {
perror("readlink");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
/* Print only 'nbytes' of 'buf', as it doesn't contain a terminating
null byte ('\0'). */
printf("'%s' points to '%.*s'\n", argv[1], (int) nbytes, buf);
/* If the return value was equal to the buffer size, then
the link target was larger than expected (perhaps because the
target was changed between the call to lstat() and the call to
readlink()). Warn the user that the returned target may have
been truncated. */
if (nbytes == bufsiz)
printf("(Returned buffer may have been truncated)\n");
free(buf);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
readlink(1), lstat(2), stat(2), symlink(2), realpath(3),
path_resolution(7), symlink(7)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
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man-pages@man7.org
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-06-28 readlink(2)
Pages that refer to this page: readlink(1), realpath(1), mount(2), open(2), open_by_handle_at(2), ptrace(2), read(2), stat(2), statx(2), symlink(2), syscalls(2), canonicalize_file_name(3), handle(3), realpath(3), size_t(3type), proc(5), proc_pid_cwd(5), proc_pid_exe(5), proc_pid_fd(5), proc_pid_root(5), namespaces(7), path_resolution(7), pid_namespaces(7), signal-safety(7), symlink(7), lsof(8), mount(8), umount(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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