Você pode usar find
com a opção -L
, por exemplo,
find -L . -type f -exec grep foo {} \;
Isso faz com que find
sigam links simbólicos. Citando POSIX :
-L
Cause the file information and file type evaluated for each symbolic link encountered as a path operand on the command line or encountered during the traversal of a file hierarchy to be those of the file referenced by the link, and not the link itself. If the referenced file does not exist, the file information and type shall be for the link itself.