Use grealpath for Path Operations

Rule (CRITICAL)

ALWAYS use grealpath command for:

• Calculating relative paths between files/directories
• Converting relative paths to absolute paths
• Resolving symbolic links to absolute paths

Relative Path Calculation

Use grealpath --relative-to=<base> to calculate relative paths:

# Calculate relative path from base directory to target
grealpath --relative-to=/home/user /home/user/test
# Output: test

# Calculate relative path from current directory
grealpath --relative-to=. ./subdir/file.txt
# Output: subdir/file.txt

# Calculate relative path between two specific paths
grealpath --relative-to=/path/to/base /path/to/base/subdir/file.txt
# Output: subdir/file.txt

Absolute Path Conversion

Use grealpath to convert relative paths to absolute paths:

# Convert relative path to absolute path
grealpath ./subdir/file.txt
# Output: /home/user/project/subdir/file.txt

# Convert with current directory as base
grealpath file.txt
# Output: /home/user/project/file.txt

# Resolve symbolic links to absolute paths
grealpath symlink
# Output: /home/user/project/actual/path

Common Use Cases

Getting Relative Path Between Two Files

# From file A to file B
grealpath --relative-to=/path/to/fileA /path/to/fileB

Converting Relative to Absolute

# Simple conversion
grealpath relative/path/to/file

# With base directory
grealpath --relative-to=/base/dir relative/path

Resolving Paths with Symbolic Links

# Resolve all symbolic links
grealpath -s symlink
# Or without -s flag (default behavior resolves symlinks)
grealpath symlink

Examples

Good: Using grealpath

# Calculate relative path
grealpath --relative-to=/home/user /home/user/project/src/file.ts
# Output: project/src/file.ts

# Convert to absolute path
grealpath ./src/file.ts
# Output: /home/user/project/src/file.ts

# Resolve symbolic link
grealpath ./link-to-file
# Output: /home/user/project/actual/file.ts

Bad: Manual Path Manipulation

# DO NOT manually calculate relative paths
# DO NOT use cd and pwd combinations
# DO NOT use string manipulation for paths

Notes

• grealpath is the GNU version of realpath (Mac uses BSD version by default)
• Always use grealpath instead of realpath for consistent behavior
• The --relative-to option requires GNU coreutils
• Paths are normalized (removes . and .. components)