realpath Returns canonicalized absolute pathname stringrealpath stringpath realpath expands all symbolic links and resolves references to '/./', '/../' and extra '/' characters in the input path and return the canonicalized absolute pathname. The resulting path will have no symbolic link, '/./' or '/../' components. realpath returns &false; on failure, e.g. if the file does not exist. On BSD systems realpath doesn't fail if only the last path component doesn't exist, while other systems will return &false;. ]]> See also basename, dirname, and pathinfo.