How to get full path of original file of a soft symbolic link?

Try this line:

readlink -f `which command`

If command is in your $PATH variable , otherwise you need to specify the path you know.

Under Linux, readlink reads the contents of a symlink, and readlink -f follows symlinks to symlinks to symlinks, etc., until it finds something that isn't a symlink.

This isn't necessary for scp though: scp always follows symlinks (it always copies file content, ignoring metadata except that -p preserves file times and modes when possible).

If you find yourself disappointed by what metadata scp can and can't preserve, I suggest using rsync. With no option, rsync copies file contents ignoring metadata. The commonly used option -a preserves all garden-variety metadata (times, symbolic links, permissions and ownership), and there are options to preserve exotic metadata like ACLs and hard links.

I use command ls, stat, readlink.

Take file /etc/localtime as an example

[flying@lempstacker ~]$ ls /etc/localtime 
/etc/localtime
[flying@lempstacker ~]$ ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 35 Aug  2 22:41 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai

Operation

Using stat

[flying@lempstacker ~]$ stat /etc/localtime
  File: ‘/etc/localtime’ -> ‘../usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai’
  Size: 35          Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   symbolic link
Device: fd01h/64769d    Inode: 272202388   Links: 1
Access: (0777/lrwxrwxrwx)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2016-11-23 09:00:59.999887800 +0800
Modify: 2016-08-02 22:41:26.090389904 +0800
Change: 2016-08-02 22:41:26.090389904 +0800
 Birth: -
[flying@lempstacker ~]$ stat -c "%N" /etc/localtime
‘/etc/localtime’ -> ‘../usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai’

Using readlink

[flying@lempstacker ~]$ readlink /etc/localtime
../usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai
[flying@lempstacker ~]$ readlink -f /etc/localtime
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai

It seems like that command readlink -f is better.

Explanation

-f, --canonicalize: canonicalize by following every symlink in every component of the given name recursively; all but the last component must exist —— From man readlink