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dorn

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Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 2

[Solved] What is a canonical file path?

The journalctl man page speaks of "the canonicalized binary path". So I asked myself, what this is. The gnu-documentation of the command realpath states:

"realpath expands all symbolic links and resolves references to ‘/./’, ‘/../’ and extra ‘/’ characters. By default, all but the last component of the specified files must exist",

which is supposed to be a canonicalized file path form.

Is this the general definition? Are there other definitions?

Last edited by dorn (2022-08-29 11:12:19)

mpan

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Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,344

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Re: [Solved] What is a canonical file path?

Canonicalization, regarding filenames

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Sometimes I seem a bit harsh — don’t get offended too easily!

dorn

Member

Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] What is a canonical file path?

Basically, whatever the output of realpath is, that is the canonical form.
That is, resolving /./, /../, symlinks and removing extra /