How to expand a symbolic link to the full path of a filename in vim?

Question

I\'m using a Mac and MacVim 7.3.

I have a symbolic link ~/some/symlink which is a link to a real file ~/some/actual_file.

When I \"vim ~/some/symlink\" it brings

Answer 1

Your problem is the "~", which isn't really part of the filename, but instead a shorthand for your home directory. You can use expand() and then resolve(). eg:

:echo resolve(expand("~/some/symlink"))

expand() will also expand things like environment variables (eg: $HOME, $VIMRUNTIME).