Programming Perl, 4th Edition

readlink

readlink EXPR
readlink

This function returns the filename pointed to by a symbolic link. EXPR should evaluate to a filename, the last component of which is a symbolic link. If it is not a symbolic link, or if symbolic links are not implemented on the filesystem, or if some system error occurs, undef is returned, and you should check the error code in $!.

Be aware that the returned symlink may be relative to the location you specified. For instance, you may say:

$link_contents = readlink("/usr/local/src/express/yourself.h");

and readlink might return:

../express.1.23/includes/yourself.h

which is not directly usable as a filename unless your current directory happens to be /usr/local/src/express.