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Learn how to replace existing symlinks with actual files using the `cp` and `readlink` commands in a Linux environment. The provided command removes the symlink and creates the actual file with its contents.

Replace symlink with actual files

Looks like ChatGPT generated this post… and failed. 
This is the <a href="https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/readlink.1.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">proper <code>readlink</code> man page</a> which will print the value the symlink is pointing to. If the value is an absolute file path, this will work fine.

Depending on the system, working with hard links instead of symbolic links could have been a better solution.
Basically every file is a hard link already, because a hard link is just a link between the filename and the actual data stored on the filesystem
(pointer to the inode). You can simply add additional links to the same data, without the need of duplicating a file. Just use <code>ln</code> instead of <code>ln -s</code> when you create the link.
There are some limitations though. Hard links only work for regular files (not directories or special files) and cannot span multiple filesystems. But if that was not the case, the use of hard links could have been used to prevented the data duplication.