04 February 2023

Real path to linked files

In Ubuntu, when you click on a link to a folder and reach that folder via Nautilus, you are only shown the path you came from, rather than the actual path of the folder or file. 

For example, it'd be:

/media/nav/Link_to_folder/folderOrFile

However, the actual path of the file would be:

/media/nav/Transcend_NTFS/NavData/backup/folderOrFile

Even if you open a terminal in the linked folder, a pwd command would still show you only the linked path, rather than the actual path.

To view the actual path, simply use:

realpath fileOrFolderName