BASENAME(1) General Commands Manual BASENAME(1)

basename, dirname — return filename or directory portion of pathname

basename string [suffix]

dirname string

basename deletes any prefix ending with the last slash ‘/’ character present in string, and a suffix, if given. The resulting filename is written to the standard output. A non-existent suffix is ignored.

dirname deletes the filename portion, beginning with the last slash ‘/’ character to the end of string, and writes the result to the standard output.

Both the basename and dirname utilities exit 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

The following line sets the shell variable FOO to /usr/bin.

FOO=`dirname /usr/bin/trail`

csh(1), sh(1), basename(3), dirname(3)

The basename and dirname utilities conform to IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 (“POSIX.2”).

April 18, 1994 NetBSD 11.0