Show “true” symbolic link

[FilouPlains]

Beforehand, thanks for developing this tool!

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When using the command g, for some reason, the symbolic link path is not the “true” one. Example given below:

bash-5.3$ g -l
-rw-r--r--   1.2 MiB x x Feb 16 01:28 X.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx      20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 Y.pdf => /home/rouaud/Documents/Y_bis.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx      50 B x x Mar 05 14:07 Z.pdf => /home/rouaud/Documents/Z_bis.pdf

bash-5.3$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 x x 1258050 févr. 16 01:28 X.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 x x      20 mars   5 12:26 Y.pdf -> Y_bis.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 x x      50 mars   5 14:07 Z.pdf -> /home/rouaud/Documents/Z_bis.pdf

I used the command ln -sr to create relative links. But for some reason, g display me the full path each time. Instead of showing me the “real path”, as the one displayed by readlink. Thus, it is hard to check whether the relative symbolic links I created are good or not…

I tried to check --help. And test other option like g --dereference or g --no-dereference, but I found nothing… It could that I read too quickly or badly the --help.

Describe the solution you'd like

Display the path, as would do readlink.

Other context

Data	Description
Kernel	Linux 6.8.0-101-generic
Distro	Kubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) x86_64
Desktop	KDE Plasma 5.27.12
Terminal	kitty 0.44.0
Shell	fish 3.7.0
Package origin	nix

[equationzhao]

Thanks for submitting this feature request! Your observation is very accurate.

Problem Analysis

As you described, currently g uses filepath.EvalSymlinks() when displaying symbolic links, which resolves relative symbolic links to absolute paths. In contrast, ls -l uses readlink to show the original content of the symbolic link, which better matches user expectations.

Proposed Solution

We plan to adopt the following approach to address this issue:

Change default behavior to align with ls -l

• Default behavior: display the original content of symbolic links (preserving relative paths)
• --full-path mode: When using --fp/--full-path, display the fully resolved path

Benefits of this approach:

1. ✅ Default behavior consistent with ls -l, following Unix tool conventions
2. ✅ No need for new flags, keeping the command simple
3. ✅ --full-path provides an option to view complete paths for scenarios requiring absolute paths

Example comparison:

# Create relative symbolic link using ln -sr
$ ln -sr Y_bis.pdf Y.pdf

# Fixed g behavior (default)
$ g -l
lrwxrwxrwx  20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 Y.pdf => Y_bis.pdf

# Using --full-path to view complete path
$ g -l --full-path
lrwxrwxrwx  20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 /home/rouaud/Documents/Y.pdf => /home/rouaud/Documents/Y_bis.pdf => /home/rouaud/Documents/Y_bis.pdf

Temporary Workaround

Before implementing this feature, you can use the --relative-to parameter to achieve a similar effect:

# Display relative to current directory
$ g -l --relative-to='.'

# Or using the current working directory
$ g -l --relative-to="$PWD"

This will convert the symbolic link target to a path relative to the specified directory. While not exactly equivalent to readlink's original output, it allows you to see relative paths instead of absolute paths.

Timeline

I'll implement this feature in the coming days. If you're willing, you're also welcome to submit a PR to help accelerate this process.

Thanks again for your feedback! 🙏

---

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.5 noreply@anthropic.com

[FilouPlains]

Hello!

Thanks for your reply. Just a quick note. I did try --relative-to, but it did not answer what I want. As I said in my first post, some links done using ln command are relative, but others can be absolute. Thus, the example I gave (Y.pdf is relative, Z.pdf is absolute). And currently, with g, you can either have full or relative, but not “true” path as given by readlink.

For the behaviour, may I suggest adding an option like --resolve-link instead? Like that, g --full-path will show the full path for the files, while keeping the “true” readlink path. While g --resolve-link will show full resolved path for the links, showing absolute path for the links, but keep showing relative path for the files. Meaning that using g --resolve-link --full-path will show full path for the file, and full resolved path for the links. But I am not sure how complex it could be (in terms for code modification, but also in terms of CLI usage). Here what it could look like:

$ g -l
-rw-r--r--   1.2 MiB x x Feb 16 01:28 X.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx  20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 Y.pdf => Y_bis.pdf

$ g -l --full-path
-rw-r--r--   1.2 MiB x x Feb 16 01:28 /home/rouaud/Documents/X.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx  20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 /home/rouaud/Documents/Y.pdf => Y_bis.pdf

$ g -l --resolve-link
-rw-r--r--   1.2 MiB x x Feb 16 01:28 X.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx  20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 Y.pdf => /home/rouaud/Documents/Y_bis.pdf

$ g -l --resolve-link --full-path
-rw-r--r--   1.2 MiB x x Feb 16 01:28 /home/rouaud/Documents/X.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx  20 B x x Mar 05 12:26 /home/rouaud/Documents/Y.pdf => /home/rouaud/Documents/Y_bis.pdf

Anyway, thanks for your time and good luck with these modifications!