You could always create an agent which would canonicalize paths. The typical way to do this is to use readlink -f "$FilePath"; you can invoke it in the same way that @mwra used cat above. For example:
/tmp » readlink -f ~/Downloads
/Users/nick/Downloads
Terminal Tip
General tip for those new to the command line: You can learn more about the readlink command, and every other Terminal command, by typing man readlink at the Terminal command prompt. Substitute readlink with the name of the command you’re curious about.