Get file directory path from file path

bash
Talespin_Kit picture Talespin_Kit · May 25, 2011 · Viewed 442.2k times · Source

In Bash, if VAR="/home/me/mydir/file.c", how do I get "/home/me/mydir"?

Answer

paxdiablo picture paxdiablo · May 25, 2011

dirname and basename are the tools you're looking for for extracting path components:

$ export VAR='/home/pax/file.c'
$ echo "$(dirname "${VAR}")" ; echo "$(basename "${VAR}")"
/home/pax
file.c

They're not internal Bash commands but they're part of the POSIX standard - see dirname and basename. Hence, they're probably available on, or can be obtained for, most platforms that are capable of running bash.

Related questions

How to concatenate string variables in Bash

In PHP, strings are concatenated together as follows: $foo = "Hello"; $foo .= " World"; Here, $foo becomes "Hello World". How is this accomplished in Bash?

Read More
How can I check if a directory exists in a Bash shell script?

What command can be used to check if a directory exists or not, within a Bash shell script?

Read More
How do I tell if a regular file does not exist in Bash?

I've used the following script to see if a file exists: #!/bin/bash FILE=$1 if [ -f $FILE ]; then echo "File $FILE exists." else echo "File $FILE does not exist." fi What's the correct syntax to use if I only want …

Read More