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试试。以下是全文来源，特此捐赠给公众领域。

// realpath.c: display the absolute path to a file or directory.
// Adam Liss, August, 2007
// This program is provided "as-is" to the public domain, without express or
// implied warranty, for any non-profit use, provided this notice is maintained.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <libgen.h>   
#include <limits.h>

static char *s_pMyName;
void usage(void);

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char
        sPath[PATH_MAX];


    s_pMyName = strdup(basename(argv[0]));

    if (argc < 2)
        usage();

    printf("%s\n", realpath(argv[1], sPath));
    return 0;
}    

void usage(void)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "usage: %s PATH\n", s_pMyName);
    exit(1);
}

基于loveborg出色的python代码片段，我这样写:

#!/bin/sh

# Version of readlink that follows links to the end; good for Mac OS X

for file in "$@"; do
  while [ -h "$file" ]; do
    l=`readlink $file`
    case "$l" in
      /*) file="$l";;
      *) file=`dirname "$file"`/"$l"
    esac
  done
  #echo $file
  python -c "import os,sys; print os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1])" "$file"
done

我需要一个同时满足这三点的解决方案:

在普通mac上工作。realpath和readlink -f是插件 解决符号链接 有错误处理

没有一个人的答案同时包含了第一条和第二条。我加了第三条是为了让其他人不用再剃牦牛了。

#!/bin/bash

P="${1?Specify a file path}"

[ -e "$P" ] || { echo "File does not exist: $P"; exit 1; }

while [ -h "$P" ] ; do
    ls="$(ls -ld "$P")"
    link="$(expr "$ls" : '.*-> \(.*\)$')"
    expr "$link" : '/.*' > /dev/null &&
        P="$link" ||
        P="$(dirname "$P")/$link"
done
echo "$(cd "$(dirname "$P")"; pwd)/$(basename "$P")"

下面是一个简短的测试用例，在路径中有一些扭曲的空格，以充分练习引用

mkdir -p "/tmp/test/ first path "
mkdir -p "/tmp/test/ second path "
echo "hello" > "/tmp/test/ first path / red .txt "
ln -s "/tmp/test/ first path / red .txt " "/tmp/test/ second path / green .txt "

cd  "/tmp/test/ second path "
fullpath " green .txt "
cat " green .txt "

我做了一个内置函数来处理这个问题，并专注于最高的性能(为了好玩)。它不解析符号链接，因此基本上与realpath -sm相同。

## A bash-only mimic of `realpath -sm`. 
## Give it path[s] as argument[s] and it will convert them to clean absolute paths
abspath () { 
  ${*+false} && { >&2 echo $FUNCNAME: missing operand; return 1; };
  local c s p IFS='/';  ## path chunk, absolute path, input path, IFS for splitting paths into chunks
  local -i r=0;         ## return value

  for p in "$@"; do
    case "$p" in        ## Check for leading backslashes, identify relative/absolute path
    '') ((r|=1)); continue;;
    //[!/]*)  >&2 echo "paths =~ ^//[^/]* are impl-defined; not my problem"; ((r|=2)); continue;;
    /*) ;;
    *)  p="$PWD/$p";;   ## Prepend the current directory to form an absolute path
    esac

    s='';
    for c in $p; do     ## Let IFS split the path at '/'s
      case $c in        ### NOTE: IFS is '/'; so no quotes needed here
      ''|.) ;;          ## Skip duplicate '/'s and '/./'s
      ..) s="${s%/*}";; ## Trim the previous addition to the absolute path string
      *)  s+=/$c;;      ### NOTE: No quotes here intentionally. They make no difference, it seems
      esac;
    done;

    echo "${s:-/}";     ## If xpg_echo is set, use `echo -E` or `printf $'%s\n'` instead
  done
  return $r;
}

注意:这个函数不处理以//开头的路径，因为路径开头的两个双斜杠是实现定义的行为。但是，它可以很好地处理/、///等等。

这个函数似乎正确地处理了所有的边缘情况，但可能还有一些我没有处理的情况。

性能注意:当调用数千个参数时，abspath运行速度比realpath -sm慢10倍左右;当使用单个参数调用abspath时，在我的机器上，abspath的运行速度比realpath -sm快110倍，这主要是因为不需要每次都执行新程序。

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。