Reading plaintext data from file into Tinderbox

satikusala · February 15, 2023, 7:05pm

Thanks. Did not really understand it at first. Making for sense now.

mwra · February 15, 2023, 8:23pm

Thanks. IIRC, readlink isn’t installed as a Mac default. It can be installed using Homebrew^† via this command line:

brew install coreutils

As regards a ‘manual’ for readlink, users with Dash installed, add ‘manpages’ and you can read about readlink in a UI rather than having to use terminal.

@ndpi is there a method to do this using plain vanilla Mac install. I ask as many users here aren’t techies or CompSci folk so ‘just’ installing *nix command line tools isn’t always comfortable feeling or a simple task. Thanks for your help with this.

†. Homebrew is also not a default Mac install, so if you don’t have that you’d need to install it (see https://brew.sh for more) before installing coreutils. Sorry there isn’t a more user-friendly method for non-tech users.

ndpi · February 15, 2023, 8:50pm

Always a good thing to check. The BSD version of readlink should be installed by default at /usr/bin/readlink. Homebrew packages the more modern, feature-rich GNU utilities.

It looks like Apple has a man page in their online archives for the system call but not the utility; there’s a copy available on a 3rd party site here: readlink(1) [osx man page]