Add Display The Target Of A Symbolic Link as a Unix TIL

README.md

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ working across different projects via [VisualMode](https://www.visualmode.dev/).
 
 For a steady stream of TILs, [sign up for my newsletter](https://visualmode.kit.com/newsletter).
 
-_1815 TILs and counting..._
+_1816 TILs and counting..._
 
 See some of the other learning resources I work on:
 
@@ -1736,6 +1736,7 @@ If you've learned something here, support my efforts writing daily TILs by
 - [Display Free Disk Space](unix/display-free-disk-space.md)
 - [Display Line Numbers While Using Less](unix/display-line-numbers-while-using-less.md)
 - [Display The Contents Of A Directory As A Tree](unix/display-the-contents-of-a-directory-as-a-tree.md)
+- [Display The Target Of A Symbolic Link](unix/display-the-target-of-a-symbolic-link.md)
 - [Do A Dry Run Of An rsync](unix/do-a-dry-run-of-an-rsync.md)
 - [Do Not Overwrite Existing Files](unix/do-not-overwrite-existing-files.md)
 - [Download A File With Curl](unix/download-a-file-with-curl.md)

unix/display-the-target-of-a-symbolic-link.md

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+# Display The Target Of A Symbolic Link
+
+I have symlinked binaries all over my machine. Many of them are configured via
+my [dotfiles setup](https://github.com/jbranchaud/dotfiles). There are also
+tools like `uv` that install CLI tooling in a canonical place and then symlink
+it to a more user-friendly location.
+
+`ruff` which I [installed as a CLI tool via
+`uv`](python/globally-install-cli-tool-with-uv.md) is a good example of this.
+When I look at the location of `ruff` via the `which` command, I get a `bin`
+directory that differed from where I expected `uv` to install it.
+
+```bash
+❯ which ruff
+/Users/lastword/.local/bin/ruff
+```
+
+When I `ls` that directory, I can see it is full of symlinked binaries (as
+annotated by the trailing `@` symbol).
+
+```bash
+❯ ls /Users/lastword/.local/bin
+ ./                         cursor-agent@        pplay@                       tmux-fork-repo@
+ ../                        figprev@             pyright@                     tmux-new-session@
+ agent@                     ghprs@               pyright-langserver@          v@
+ bic@                       git_better_branch@   pyright-python@              wait_for_port@
+ bip@                       local-clone@         pyright-python-langserver@
+ claude@                    nvims@               ruff@
+ command-history-preview@   pingf@               task*
+```
+
+To resolve one of these symlinks to their target location, I can use the
+`readlink` utility.
+
+```bash
+❯ readlink /Users/lastword/.local/bin/ruff
+/Users/lastword/.local/share/uv/tools/ruff/bin/ruff
+```
+
+And there it is, the actual directory where I expected `uv` to have installed
+`ruff`.
+
+See `man readlink` for more details.