How to check if a symlink exists

Question

I\'m trying to check if a symlink exists in bash. Here\'s what I\'ve tried.

mda=/usr/mda
if [ ! -L $mda ]; then
  echo \"=> File doesn\'t exist\"
fi


mda         


        

Answer 1

-L returns true if the "file" exists and is a symbolic link (the linked file may or may not exist). You want -f (returns true if file exists and is a regular file) or maybe just -e (returns true if file exists regardless of type).

According to the GNU manpage, -h is identical to -L, but according to the BSD manpage, it should not be used:

-h file True if file exists and is a symbolic link. This operator is retained for compatibility with previous versions of this program. Do not rely on its existence; use -L instead.

Answer 2

You can check the existence of a symlink and that it is not broken with:

[ -L ${my_link} ] && [ -e ${my_link} ]

So, the complete solution is:

if [ -L ${my_link} ] ; then
   if [ -e ${my_link} ] ; then
      echo "Good link"
   else
      echo "Broken link"
   fi
elif [ -e ${my_link} ] ; then
   echo "Not a link"
else
   echo "Missing"
fi

Answer 3

-L is the test for file exists and is also a symbolic link

If you do not want to test for the file being a symbolic link, but just test to see if it exists regardless of type (file, directory, socket etc) then use -e

So if file is really file and not just a symbolic link you can do all these tests and get an exit status whose value indicates the error condition.

if [ ! \( -e "${file}" \) ]
then
     echo "%ERROR: file ${file} does not exist!" >&2
     exit 1
elif [ ! \( -f "${file}" \) ]
then
     echo "%ERROR: ${file} is not a file!" >&2
     exit 2
elif [ ! \( -r "${file}" \) ]
then
     echo "%ERROR: file ${file} is not readable!" >&2
     exit 3
elif [ ! \( -s "${file}" \) ]
then
     echo "%ERROR: file ${file} is empty!" >&2
     exit 4
fi

Answer 4

Maybe this is what you are looking for. To check if a file exist and is not a link.

Try this command:

file="/usr/mda" 
[ -f $file ] && [ ! -L $file ] && echo "$file exists and is not a symlink"

Answer 5

How about using readlink?

# if symlink, readlink returns not empty string (the symlink target)
# if string is not empty, test exits w/ 0 (normal)
#
# if non symlink, readlink returns empty string
# if string is empty, test exits w/ 1 (error)
simlink? () {
  test "$(readlink "${1}")";
}

FILE=/usr/mda

if simlink? "${FILE}"; then
  echo $FILE is a symlink
else
  echo $FILE is not a symlink
fi

Answer 6

If you are testing for file existence you want -e not -L. -L tests for a symlink.