Yeh - that figures out links pretty well..

use strict;
use Cwd 'abs_path';

my $fileinquestion = "/var/mail/";
my $realpathfor = abs_path($fileinquestion);
print "$realpathfor\n";
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If you have to be out inside a system operation, the value of

pwd -P
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is pretty real

Out of curiosity I tried a .. operation under win2k with AS.. it seems to work..

#!perl

use strict;
use Cwd;
use Cwd 'abs_path';

my $q = 'C:\\TEMP\\';
chdir $q;
my $dirnow = getcwd();

print "Changed dir to C:\\TEMP\n";
print "Cwd thinks I am in $dirnow\n";

chdir "..\\";

print "Changed dir up one level ..\n";
my $newdirnow = getcwd();
print "Cwd now thinks I am in $newdirnow\n";
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so that might do the right thing if a user provides input including \path\..\another\path, so long as backslashes get treated correctly