NAME
basename, dirname — extract portions of path names
SYNOPSIS
basename
string
[suffix]
dirname
[string]
DESCRIPTION
basename
deletes any prefix ending in
/
and the
suffix
(if present in
string)
from
string,
and prints the result on the standard output.
If
string
consists entirely of slash characters,
string
is set to a single slash character.
If there are any trailing slash characters in
string,
they are removed.
If the suffix operand is present
but not identical to the characters remaining in
string,
but it is identical to a suffix of the characters remaining in
string,
the suffix is removed from
string.
basename
is normally used inside command substitution marks
(\`...\`)
within shell procedures.
dirname
delivers all but the last level of the path name in
string.
If
string
does not contain a directory component,
dirname
returns
.,
indicating the current working directory.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables
LC_CTYPE
determines the interpretation of string and, in the
case of basename, suffix as single and/or multi-byte characters.
If
LC_CTYPE
is not specified in the environment or is set to
the empty string, the value of
LANG
is used as a default for each
unspecified or empty variable. If
LANG
is not specified or is
set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see
lang(5))
is
used instead of
LANG.
If any internationalization variable
contains an invalid setting,
basename
and
dirname
behave as if all internationalization variables are set to "C".
See
environ(5).
International Code Set Support
Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.
EXAMPLES
The following shell script, invoked with the argument
/usr/src/cmd/cat.c,
compiles the named file and moves the output to a file named
cat
in the current directory:
cc $1
mv a.out `basename $1 .c`
The following example sets the shell variable
NAME
to
/usr/src/cmd:
NAME=`dirname /usr/src/cmd/cat.c`
RETURNS
basename
and
dirname
return one of the following values:
- 0
Successful completion.
- 1
Incorrect number of command-line arguments.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
basename: SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, POSIX.2
dirname: SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, POSIX.2
