basename(1)

NAME

basename, dirname − deliver portions of pathnames

SYNOPSIS

basename string [ suffix ]
dirname string

AVAILABILITY

SUNWcsu

DESCRIPTION

basename deletes any prefix ending in / and the suffix (if present in string) from string, and prints the result on the standard output. It is normally used inside substitution marks (``) within shell procedures. The suffix is a pattern as defined on the ed(1) manual page.

dirname delivers all but the last level of the path name in string.

EXAMPLES

The following example, invoked with the argument /home/sms/personal/mail sets the environment variable NAME to the file named mail and the environment variable MYMAILPATH to the string /home/sms/personal:

example% NAME=`basename $HOME/personal/mail`
example% MYMAILPATH=`dirname $HOME/personal/mail`

This shell procedure, invoked with the argument /usr/src/bin/cat.c, compiles the named file and moves the output to cat in the current directory:

example% cc $1
example% mv a.out `basename $1 .c`

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