Getting absolute path of a file

How can I convert a relative path to an absolute path in C on Unix? Is there a convenient system function for this?

On Windows there is a GetFullPathName function that does the job, but I didn't find something similar on Unix...

Use realpath().

The realpath() function shall derive, from the pathname pointed to by file_name, an absolute pathname that names the same file, whose resolution does not involve '.', '..', or symbolic links. The generated pathname shall be stored as a null-terminated string, up to a maximum of {PATH_MAX} bytes, in the buffer pointed to by resolved_name.

If resolved_name is a null pointer, the behavior of realpath() is implementation-defined.

The following example generates an absolute pathname for the file identified by the symlinkpath argument. The generated pathname is stored in the actualpath array.

#include <stdlib.h>
...
char *symlinkpath = "/tmp/symlink/file";
char actualpath [PATH_MAX+1];
char *ptr;


ptr = realpath(symlinkpath, actualpath);

Try realpath() in stdlib.h

char filename[] = "../../../../data/000000.jpg";
char* path = realpath(filename, NULL);
if(path == NULL){
    printf("cannot find file with name[%s]\n", filename);
} else{
    printf("path[%s]\n", path);
    free(path);
}