Absolute path to a relative file

Get the absolute path to a file based on the relative path.

Sometimes you want to get the absolute path to a file, but don’t want to have the hassle of concatenating the result of pwd to a relative path.

No need! Enter the realpath command.

Example Usage

# Hassle
$ echo `pwd`/src/content/til/til-2.md
/home/konker/src/content/​til/til-2.md

# 1000% better
$ realpath src/content/til/til-2.md
/home/konker/src/content/​til/til-2.md

Additional

Also handy can be this snippet to put into scripts to establish the absolute path of the script itself. From there every other path reference can be made relative to this fixed point.

Example Usage

#!/usr/bin/env bash

SCRIPT_DIR=$( cd -- "$( dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" &> /dev/null && pwd )