Move to the directory of a symbolic link

Question

On a UNIX machine I in my current directory I create a symbolic link:

> ln -s public_html/code/index.html

Which creates a file locally named index.html. How can cd to the directory public_html/code from the soft link file?

Answer 1

In a sh-like environment:

cd $(dirname $(readlink -f path/to/link))

you can put it in a function:

function cdl
{
    cd $(dirname $(readlink -f "$1"))
}

Answer 2

This would work.

cd_link ()
{
    LINK="$1";
    [ ! -L "$LINK" ] && return;
    DIR=$(readlink "$LINK");
    DIR=${DIR%/*};
    cd $DIR
}

This needs to be a function, not a script. Put in your .bashrc, .kshrc, etc.