How to follow a symbolic/soft link in cmd or PowerShell?

Question

My searches have only shown me how to create symbolic links using mklink in cmd. I have seen some things saying to use readlink, but PowerS

Answer 1

To avoid confusion stemming from your question:

• Windows shortcut files (*.lnk files), which are a feature of the Windows (GUI) shell, are distinct from symbolic links (symlinks), which are a feature of the (NTFS) filesystem.

• Shortcut files - which you are interested in - store the path of a file or folder they point to inside the file, which is why:

  • You cannot directly cd to a shortcut file's target folder, because filesystem commands such as cd know nothing about the content of files.
  • You must read the content of the shortcut file to determine its target, which you can then pass to cd or Set-Location (in PowerShell).

  • The file format of shortcut file is a binary one that can be read via an in-box COM component that exposes Windows shell functionality; e.g., to determine the target folder of a shortcut file named Samples.lnk and change to that folder, use PowerShell:

    # NOTE: * Despite the name "CreateShortcut()", the method is also
    #         used to *read* shortcut files.
    #       * Prefixing the filename with "$PWD/" is needed in order
    #         to target a file in the current directory, because
    #         the method doesn't know what PowerShell's current dir. is.
    cd (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell).CreateShortcut("$PWD/Samples.lnk").TargetPath
    

• Symlinks, by contrast:

  • (typically) transparently redirect to their target, i.e., the filesystem item (file or folder) they point to.

  • You can therefore use cd directly with a symlink to a folder, but note that it is still the symlink's path that is shown.

  • To print a symlink's target - akin to what the readlink utility does on Unix-like platforms - use PowerShell; e.g., to print the target of a symlink named Samples in the current directory:

     (Get-Item Samples).Target
    
     # Or, after running `cd Samples`:
     (Get-Item .).Target
    

  • Note that it's not straightforward to get a symlink's target in cmd.exe, but if you use
    dir /al *, the listing will also show the link's target path, after the name, enclosed in [...]; note that the trailing * is necessary in order to show information about the link itself, not its target's contents; note that, although unlikely, that may match other links that start with the same path as well.

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Unlike shortcut files, symlinks are still rare in the Windows world, not least because prior to Windows 10 they invariably required admin privileges to create; in Windows 10, if developer mode is enabled (by an administrator), even non-administrative users / non-elevated processes can now create symlinks - see https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/, which also explains why symlinks are likely to see increasing usage in the future.