I'd like my script to interpret links when processing files

> ls -l z-writing_scripts 
lrwxr-xr-x  1 anon3202  users  19 Dec 25 05:24 alias -> www/realfile

I'd like for my script to return details about ~/www/realfile when it's fed information about alias ($1) instead of the information about the link named alias.

I think (maybe?) I want some type of exec? But I'm really fuzzy on this.

I was contemplating doing an ls, a cut and evaluating it, then grabbing the last part to use as path... but it seems like that's a lot of work, and that there should be a simpler (more elegant) solution out there.