-h FILE (conditional operator)

true if the file is a symbolic link. false if the file does not exist or is not a symbolic link.

-L is an alias of -h.

Links

• Bash manual
• POSIX specification of test

Examples

Different ways to test if a file is a symbolic link:

1 2 3 4

test -h /bin/sh && echo "symbolic link" [ -h /bin/sh ] && echo "symbolic link" # Bash [[ -h /bin/sh ]] && echo "symbolic link"