How can I get the full path of a relative directory in Bash?

Question

Let's say I have a variable like this:

directory="/home/lrh/package1/util/../.."

How could I convert it to the following?:

"/home/lrh"

In other words, how could I have Bash "evaluate" the directory variable and get the full path?

Answer 1

Changing to the directory seems to be a straightforward approach:

echo "$(cd "${directory}"; pwd)"

Answer 2

What you want is :

readlink -f "$directory"

(readlink: print resolved symbolic links or canonical file names)