Bash extracting file basename from long path

bash filenames glob
Benoit B. picture Benoit B. · Sep 17, 2013 · Viewed 34.7k times · Source

In bash I am trying to glob a list of files from a directory to give as input to a program. However I would also like to give this program the list of filenames

files="/very/long/path/to/various/files/*.file"

So I could use it like that. 

prompt> program -files $files -names $namelist

If the glob gives me :

/very/long/path/to/various/files/AA.file /very/long/path/to/various/files/BB.file /very/long/path/to/various/files/CC.file /very/long/path/to/various/files/DD.file /very/long/path/to/various/files/ZZ.file

I'd like to get the list of AA BB CC DD ZZ to feed my program without the long pathname and file extension. However I have no clue on how start there ! Any hint much appreciated !

Answer

dogbane picture dogbane · Sep 17, 2013

It's better to use an array to hold the filenames. A string variable will not handle filenames which contain spaces.

Also, you don't need to use the basename command. Instead use bash's built-in string manipulation.

Try this:

files=( /very/long/path/to/various/files/*.file )
for file in "${files[@]}"
do
  filename="${file##*/}"
  filenameWithoutExtension="${filename%.*}"
  echo "$filenameWithoutExtension"
done

Related questions

How to loop over files in directory and change path and add suffix to filename

I need to write a script that starts my program with different arguments, but I'm new to Bash. I start my program with: ./MyProgram.exe Data/data1.txt [Logs/data1_Log.txt]. Here is the pseudocode for what I want …

Read More
Extract filename and extension in Bash

I want to get the filename (without extension) and the extension separately. The best solution I found so far is: NAME=`echo "$FILE" | cut -d'.' -f1` EXTENSION=`echo "$FILE" | cut -d'.' -f2` This is wrong because it doesn't …

Read More
Extract file basename without path and extension in bash

Given file names like these: /the/path/foo.txt bar.txt I hope to get: foo bar Why this doesn't work? #!/bin/bash fullfile=$1 fname=$(basename $fullfile) fbname=${fname%.*} echo $fbname What's the right way to do it?

Read More