std::experimental::filesystem::read_symlink

C++

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Regular expressions library (C++11)

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Technical Specifications

Technical specifications

Filesystem library (filesystem TS)

Library fundamentals (library fundamentals TS)

Library fundamentals 2 (library fundamentals 2 TS)

Extensions for parallelism (parallelism TS)

Extensions for parallelism 2 (parallelism TS v2)

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Concepts (concepts TS)

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Filesystem library

Classes
filesystem::path filesystem::filesystem_error filesystem::directory_entry filesystem::directory_iterator filesystem::recursive_directory_iterator filesystem::file_status	filesystem::space_info filesystem::file_type filesystem::perms filesystem::copy_options filesystem::directory_options filesystem::file_time_type
Functions
filesystem::absolute filesystem::system_complete filesystem::canonical filesystem::copy filesystem::copy_file filesystem::copy_symlink filesystem::create_directory filesystem::create_directories filesystem::create_hard_link filesystem::create_symlink filesystem::create_directory_symlink filesystem::current_path filesystem::exists filesystem::equivalent	filesystem::file_size filesystem::hard_link_count filesystem::last_write_time filesystem::permissions filesystem::read_symlink filesystem::remove filesystem::remove_all filesystem::rename filesystem::resize_file filesystem::space filesystem::status filesystem::symlink_status filesystem::temp_directory_path
File types
filesystem::is_block_file filesystem::is_character_file filesystem::is_directory filesystem::is_empty filesystem::status_known	filesystem::is_fifo filesystem::is_other filesystem::is_regular_file filesystem::is_socket filesystem::is_symlink

Defined in header <experimental/filesystem>
path read_symlink(const path& p); path read_symlink(const path& p, error_code& ec);		(filesystem TS)

If the path p refers to a symbolic link, returns a new path object which refers to the target of that symbolic link.

It is an error if p does not refer to a symbolic link.

The non-throwing overload returns an empty path on errors.

Parameters

p	-	path to a symlink
ec	-	out-parameter for error reporting in the non-throwing overload

Return value

The target of the symlink (which may not necessarily exist)

Exceptions

The overload that does not take a error_code& parameter throws filesystem_error on underlying OS API errors, constructed with p as the first argument and the OS error code as the error code argument. std::bad_alloc may be thrown if memory allocation fails. The overload taking a error_code& parameter sets it to the OS API error code if an OS API call fails, and executes ec.clear() if no errors occur. This overload has

noexcept specification:

noexcept

Example

Run this code

#include <iostream>
#include <experimental/filesystem>
namespace fs = std::experimental::filesystem;
int main()
{
    // on a typical Linux system, /lib/libc.so.6 is a symlink
    fs::path p = "/lib/libc.so.6";
    if(exists(p) && is_symlink(p))
        std::cout << p << " -> " << read_symlink(p) << '\n';
    else
        std::cout << p << " does not exist or is not a symlink\n";
}

Possible output:

"/lib/libc.so.6" -> "libc-2.12.so"

See also

is_symlink	checks whether the argument refers to a symbolic link (function)
create_symlinkcreate_directory_symlink	creates a symbolic link (function)
copy_symlink	copies a symbolic link (function)
statussymlink_status	determines file attributes determines file attributes, checking the symlink target (function)