The readlink function gets the value of the symbolic link filename. The file name that the link points to is copied into buffer. This file name string is not null-terminated; readlink normally returns the number of characters copied. The size argument specifies the maximum number of characters to copy, usually the allocation size of buffer.

readlink.c

ssize_t readlink (const char *filename, char *buffer, size_t size)

char *readlink_malloc (const char *filename)
{
  int size = 100;
  char *buffer = NULL;

  while (1)
    {
      buffer = (char *) xrealloc (buffer, size);
      int nchars = readlink (filename, buffer, size);
      if (nchars < 0)
        {
          free (buffer);
          return NULL;
        }
      if (nchars < size)
        return buffer;
      size *= 2;
    }
}