如果你只想规范化一个路径，不管是否存在，不涉及文件系统，不解析任何链接，也不使用外部utils，这里有一个从Python的posixpath.normpath转换而来的纯Bash函数。

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Normalize path, eliminating double slashes, etc.
# Usage: new_path="$(normpath "${old_path}")"
# Translated from Python's posixpath.normpath:
# https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Lib/posixpath.py#L337
normpath() {
  local IFS=/ initial_slashes='' comp comps=()
  if [[ $1 == /* ]]; then
    initial_slashes='/'
    [[ $1 == //* && $1 != ///* ]] && initial_slashes='//'
  fi
  for comp in $1; do
    [[ -z ${comp} || ${comp} == '.' ]] && continue
    if [[ ${comp} != '..' || (-z ${initial_slashes} && ${#comps[@]} -eq 0) || (\
      ${#comps[@]} -gt 0 && ${comps[-1]} == '..') ]]; then
      comps+=("${comp}")
    elif ((${#comps[@]})); then
      unset 'comps[-1]'
    fi
  done
  comp="${initial_slashes}${comps[*]}"
  printf '%s\n' "${comp:-.}"
}

例子:

new_path="$(normpath '/foo/bar/..')"
echo "${new_path}"
# /foo

normpath "relative/path/with trailing slashs////"
# relative/path/with trailing slashs

normpath "////a/../lot/././/mess////./here/./../"
# /lot/mess

normpath ""
# .
# (empty path resolved to dot)

Personally, I cannot understand why Shell, a language often used for manipulating files, doesn't offer basic functions to deal with paths. In python, we have nice libraries like os.path or pathlib, which offers a whole bunch of tools to extract filename, extension, basename, path segments, split or join paths, to get absolute or normalized paths, to determine relations between paths, to do everything without much brain. And they take care of edge cases, and they're reliable. In Shell, to do any of these, either we call external executables, or we have to reinvent wheels with these extremely rudimentary and arcane syntaxes...

话多，回答有点晚。我需要写一个，因为我卡住了旧的RHEL4/5。 I处理绝对和相对链接，并简化//，/。/和somedir/../条目。

test -x /usr/bin/readlink || readlink () {
        echo $(/bin/ls -l $1 | /bin/cut -d'>' -f 2)
    }


test -x /usr/bin/realpath || realpath () {
    local PATH=/bin:/usr/bin
    local inputpath=$1
    local changemade=1
    while [ $changemade -ne 0 ]
    do
        changemade=0
        local realpath=""
        local token=
        for token in ${inputpath//\// }
        do 
            case $token in
            ""|".") # noop
                ;;
            "..") # up one directory
                changemade=1
                realpath=$(dirname $realpath)
                ;;
            *)
                if [ -h $realpath/$token ] 
                then
                    changemade=1
                    target=`readlink $realpath/$token`
                    if [ "${target:0:1}" = '/' ]
                    then
                        realpath=$target
                    else
                        realpath="$realpath/$target"
                    fi
                else
                    realpath="$realpath/$token"
                fi
                ;;
            esac
        done
        inputpath=$realpath
    done
    echo $realpath
}

mkdir -p /tmp/bar
(cd /tmp ; ln -s /tmp/bar foo; ln -s ../.././usr /tmp/bar/link2usr)
echo `realpath /tmp/foo`

realpath的问题是它在BSD(或OSX)上不可用。下面是一个简单的配方，摘自Linux Journal上一篇相当古老(2009年)的文章，它是相当可移植的:

function normpath() {
  # Remove all /./ sequences.
  local path=${1//\/.\//\/}

  # Remove dir/.. sequences.
  while [[ $path =~ ([^/][^/]*/\.\./) ]]; do
    path=${path/${BASH_REMATCH[0]}/}
  done
  echo $path
}

注意，这个变体也不需要路径存在。

使用coreutils包中的readlink实用程序。

MY_PATH=$(readlink -f "$0")

我来晚了，但这是我在阅读了一堆这样的帖子后精心设计的解决方案:

resolve_dir() {
        (builtin cd `dirname "${1/#~/$HOME}"`'/'`basename "${1/#~/$HOME}"` 2>/dev/null; if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then pwd; fi)
}

这将解析$1的绝对路径，很好地处理~，将符号链接保留在它们所在的路径中，并且不会打乱目录堆栈。它返回完整的路径，如果不存在则不返回。它期望$1是一个目录，如果不是的话可能会失败，但这是一个很容易自己做的检查。

我不知道是否有直接的bash命令可以做到这一点，但我通常会这样做

normalDir="`cd "${dirToNormalize}";pwd`"
echo "${normalDir}"

而且效果很好。