dirname

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dirname

dirname is a standard

pathname, it will delete any suffix beginning with the last slash ('/') character and return the result. dirname is described in the Single UNIX Specification and is primarily used in shell scripts
.

History

The version of dirname bundled in

coreutils was written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.[1] The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.[2] The dirname command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.[3]

Usage

The Single UNIX Specification for dirname is:

dirname string
string
A
pathname

$ dirname /home/martin/docs/base.wiki /home/martin/docs

$ dirname /home/martin/docs/. /home/martin/docs $ dirname /home/martin/docs/ /home/martin $ dirname base.wiki . $ dirname / /

Performance

Since dirname accepts only one operand, its usage within the inner loop of shell scripts can be detrimental to performance. Consider

 while read file; do
     dirname "$file"
 done < some-input

The above excerpt would cause a separate process invocation for each line of input. For this reason, shell substitution is typically used instead

 echo "${file%/*}";

or if relative pathnames need to be handled as well

 if [ -n "${file##*/*}" ]; then
     echo "."
 else
     echo "${file%/*}";
 fi

Note that these handle trailing slashes differently than dirname.

Misconceptions

We might think that paths that end in a trailing slash are a directory. But actually, the trailing slash represents all files within the directory.

/home/martin/docs/.

The correct way to represent a path as a directory is with a trailing slash and a period.[according to whom?][citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Dirname(1) - Linux man page".
  2. ^ "Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities". unxutils.sourceforge.net.
  3. ^ IBM. "IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell" (PDF). IBM. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-09-05.

External links