shell command which returns the target of the static link

Is there a built-in unix/linux command which returns the target of a specific symbolic link?

for example if i made a symbolic link:

%> ln -s b开发者_JS百科uild_07-24-2011 latest

is there a command "foo" that does this:

%> foo latest
build_07-24-2011

i know that i can parse the ll -l latest with awk to get the same thing, just wondering if there's a more elegant way to do this.

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Take a look at readlink(1).