What is a Bash Dirname Command
Dirname is short for “directory name”. If you’re writing a bash script, this command is quite necessary, and here’s everything you should know about dirname.
Here you will find out:
- when you can use a bash multiline command
- how to print a multiline command
- when DiskInternals can help you
Are you ready? Let's read!
What is a bash dirname command?
Dirname is a built-in command on Linux and Unix-like OSes; it is used to identify paths in shell scripts. Simply, dirname will remove the last part of a filename, after the last forward-slash (/), and print the remaining command as the name of the directory where that file is saved.
The syntax and options of dirname
The syntax of dirname is:
The dirname command prints the NAME while it removes any suffix beginning with the last forward-slash ('/'). In a situation where there’s no slash (/), dirname will output a single period (.). Below is an example.
dirname offers some options, which are -z, --zero, --help, and --version.
The –z and –zero options separate the printed commands with NULL rather than initiating a newline.
The –help dirname option displays the help info and exits, while –version will print the version information and exits.
Examples of using bash dirname
Example 1:
In this example, let’s try to use dirname to extract the path info from a variable “pathnamevar” and save the result using the parameter expansion $( ).
Example 2:
From the examples above, you can see that the dirname command simply outputs the directory tree of a file name.
The other ways to use dirname in a shell script
Dirname can handle multiple files; all you need do is to pass the absolute filenames one after another.
Example:
Output:
However, if the filename is also the absolute name…
If the string is simply the filename, dirname will print a (.) as the current directory. To return the absolute path where the script is saved, you will have to change the script’s directory, get the dirname, and then save the value to a variable before echoing it.
Example:
If the script above is saved as /home/dopi/bin/test1.sh, whether you run it as /home/dopi/bin/test1.sh or bin/test1.sh, it will echo:
Make it possible to open Linux files from Windows
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Instructions for reading Linux files
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