bash/fish command to print absolute path to a file
Question: Question: is there a simple sh/bash/zsh/fish/... command to print the absolute
path of whichever file I feed it?

Usage case: I'm in directory `/a/b` and I'd like to print the full path to
file `c` on the command-line so that I can easily paste it into another
program: `/a/b/c`. Simple, yet a little program to do this could probably save
me 5 or so seconds when it comes to handling long paths, which in the end adds
up. So it surprises me that I can't find a standard utility to do this — is
there really none?

Here's a sample implementation, abspath.py:

    
    
    #!/usr/bin/python
    # Author: Diggory Hardy <diggory.hardy@gmail.com>
    # Licence: public domain
    # Purpose: print the absolute path of all input paths
    
    import sys
    import os.path
    if len(sys.argv)>1:
        for i in range(1,len(sys.argv)):
            print os.path.abspath( sys.argv[i] )
        sys.exit(0)
    else:
        print >> sys.stderr, "Usage: ",sys.argv[0]," PATH."
        sys.exit(1)
    


Answer: Try `readlink` which will resolve symbolic links:

    
    
    readlink -e /foo/bar/baz
    

