Replace Symbolic Links with Files

Question

Is there an easy way to replace all symbolic links with the file they link to?

Answer 1

For some definitions of "easy":

#!/bin/sh
set -e
for link; do
    test -h "$link" || continue

    dir=$(dirname "$link")
    reltarget=$(readlink "$link")
    case $reltarget in
        /*) abstarget=$reltarget;;
        *)  abstarget=$dir/$reltarget;;
    esac

    rm -fv "$link"
    cp -afv "$abstarget" "$link" || {
        # on failure, restore the symlink
        rm -rfv "$link"
        ln -sfv "$reltarget" "$link"
    }
done

Run this script with link names as arguments, e.g. through find . -type l -exec /path/tos/script {} +

Answer 2

If I understood you correctly the -L flag of the cp command should do exactly what you want.

Just copy all the symlinks and it will replace them with the files they point to:

cp -L file tmp/ && rm file && mv tmp/file .

Answer 3

Might be easier to just use tar to copy the data to a new directory.

-H      (c and r mode only) Symbolic links named on the command line will
        be followed; the target of the link will be archived, not the
        link itself.

You could use something like this

tar -hcf - sourcedir | tar -xf - -C newdir

tar --help:
-H, --format=FORMAT        create archive of the given format
-h, --dereference          follow symlinks; archive and dump the files they point to

Answer 4

find ./ -type l -exec sh -c 'for i in "$@"; do cp --preserve --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "$i")" "$i"; done' sh {} +

based on https://superuser.com/a/1301199/499386 of MastroGeppetto and with edits from @tom

Answer 5

"easy" will be a function of you, most likely.

I'd probably write a script that uses the "find" command line utility to find symbolically linked files, then calls rm and cp to remove and replace the file. You'd probably do well to also have the action called by find check that there's enough free space left before moving the sym link too.

Another solution may be to mount the file system in question through something that hides the sym links (like samba), then just copy everything out of that. But in many cases, something like that would introduce other problems.

A more direct answer to your question is probably "yes".

Edit: As per the request for more specific info. According to the man page for find, this command will list all sym link files in to a depth of 2 directories, from /:

find / -maxdepth 2 -type l -print

(this was found here)

To get find to execute something on finding it:

find / -maxdepth 2 -type l -exec ./ReplaceSymLink.sh {} \;

I believe that'll call some script I just made up, and pass in the file name you just found. Alternatively, you could capture the find output to file (use "find [blah] > symlinks.data", etc) then pass that file in to a script you've written to handle copying over the original gracefully.

Answer 6

This is the oneliner I've used: it assumes all local files are links to another file in "source". You can refine file selection with patterns or "find". Please, understand before using.

for f in *; do cp --remove-destination "source/$f" "$f"; done

Answer 7

for f in *; do cp --remove-destination $(readlink "$f") "$f"; done

Answer 8

Using some of the previous ideas, the following command will recursively replace every symlink with a copy of the original:

find . -type l -exec bash -c "echo 'Replacing {} ...';  cp -LR '{}' '{}'.dereferenced;  rm '{}';  mv '{}'.dereferenced '{}'" \;

Answer 9

find . -type l -exec cp --dereference --recursive '{}' '{}'.dereferenced \;

Will make a copy of each symlinked file/folder in <filename>.dereferenced, which is safer (if less convenient) than just replacing them directly. Moving the copied data to the symlinks' filenames is left as an exercise for the reader.

Answer 10

In the following environment: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS cp (GNU coreutils) 8.32

I had some unexpected behavior when running some of the other solutions that included 'cp --remove-destination' when the link referenced a directory: cp: will not create hard link './//' to directory './/'

This one-liner handles the following edge cases:

1. the link points to a nonexistent file location.
2. the link is relative.
3. the link is a directory.

It will also maintain the file mode of the copied files (cp -p).

find . -type l  -exec bash -c 'link="$(readlink -f "{}")"; [[ -a "${link}" ]] && { rm -f "{}"; cp -pr "${link}" "{}"; }  ' \;

Answer 11

Building on the above examples this is my one-liner in a verbose style. The obscure things to know are that the "{}" is a placeholder for the arguments from -exec, + marks the end of the command passed to -exec (manual), and the "sh" argument before the "{}" is required because sh -c COMMAND ARGS... expects the first ARG to be the name of the shell.

find ./ -type l -exec sh -c 'for i in "$@"; do cp --preserve --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "$i")" "$i"; done' sh {} +

Answer 12

Lot's of good answers there but I since you were looking for something easy

for i in *; do link=$(readlink $i) && rm $i && mv $link $i; done

Answer 13

I had the same problem with gwenview copying links when you would normally expect it to follow the link and copy the file.

What I did to 'clean' the directory by following all the links and copying all the pointed-to files to the directory, was create a scratch directory, run e.g.

"for file in `ls`; do cp -L $file scratchdir/$file; done; mv scratchdir/* ./" 

this is too dangerous to put in a script as there is no checking but it fixed my problem.

Answer 14

I did a one-line version, since my web-hotel didn't allowed bash-scripts and it worked fine for me:

before:
> find . -type l | wc -l
358

> for link in `find . -type l` ; do echo "$link : "; ls -al $link ; cp $link notalink; unlink $link; mv notalink $link ; ls -al $link; done
...

after:
> find . -type l | wc -l
0

Answer 15

fastest solution, because it avoids creating a new shell for every copy

replaceSymlinkWithFileInDir() {
  while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' l; do
    cp --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "$l")" "$l"
  done < <(find "${1:-.}" -type l -print0)
}

to replace only one symlink

replaceSymlinkWithFile() {
  if [ -L "$1" ]; then
    cp --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "$1")" "$1"
  fi
}

for loops break with many files.

copy + move is wasteful, the files should be replaced in-place.

function test files:

cd $(mktemp -d)

echo hello > a
ln -s a b
ln -s b c

benchmark:

f1() {
  while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' l; do
    cp --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "$l")" "$l"
  done < <(find . -type l -print0)
}

f2() {
  find ./ -type l -print0 |
  xargs -0 -i sh -c 'cp --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "{}")" "{}" '
}

f3() {
  find ./ -type l -exec \
  sh -c 'cp --remove-destination "$(readlink -f "$1")" "$1"' -- '{}' ';'
}

cd $(mktemp -d)

for f in f1 f2 f3; do
t1=$(date +%s.%N)
for round in $(seq 10); do
rm *
echo hello >0
for i in $(seq 40); do ln -s $((i-1)) $i; done
$f
t2=$(date +%s.%N)
dt=$(echo $t1 $t2 | awk '{print $2 - $1}')
done
echo $f: $dt seconds
done

result

f1: 10.8137 seconds
f2: 16.3744 seconds
f3: 16.8887 seconds

Answer 16

Plenty of really good answers here, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents. This is quick and dirty (and might not work on all systems), but it works for my use case:

realpath * | xargs -n1 -I{} mv {} .