Is there a fast method of changing directory to a symbolic links parent or source?

Question

Say I have folder stucture:

|- dir1/
|  |-  sub1/
|
|- dir2/
   |- sub1link -> /dir1/sub1/

and my current working directory is sub1link, is there a quick way to either:

• change directory to link source parent (i.e something similar to cd .. but take the user to /dir1/

• change directory to link source (i.e switch from /dir2/sub1link/ straight to /dir1/sub1

Answer 1

Use cd -P ... Run help cd for more details. -L follows symlinks and is usually the default behavior, whereas -P uses the physical directory structure.