How to get folder that a file is in with a shell script?

[maybeway36]

I have a shell script that launches kdialog to find a file to open. I want the next program to run in the same directory as that file, so if the file is ~/Documents/file.txt it should run in ~/Documents. I'm sure this can be done by taking off the last slash and everything after it, but how?

[dwhitney67]

Will something like the following work for you?


basename `find . -name someFile.txt`

Alternatively,

basename /some/path/to/a/file.txt

[maybeway36]

I really want to do the complete opposite of basename, i.e. find the directory.

[stroyan]

The opposite of basename is dirname.
Or, you can just use a bash feature to strip off the last / and trailing chars.
The second way would be a bit faster.


$ F='~/Documents/file.txt'
$ echo $(dirname "$F")
~/Documents
$ echo ${F%/*}
~/Documents

[WW]

If you use the bash parameter substitution, you must be sure that the file has at least one slash in it. Otherwise...


$ F="file.txt"
$ dirname $F
.
$ echo ${F%/*}
file.txt
$

dirname gives a correct directory ("."), but ${F%/*} gives the original file name.

[maybeway36]

Thanks! Since my script gets the file path from kdialog, I think I'll just use ${F%/*} in my script.

[ghostdog74]

you can also get the path using GNU find


find /fullpath -name "file*" -printf "%h\n"

[Mr. C.]

I presume kdialog presents you with a full pathname. If so, just use dirname as indicated earlier.

If kdialog only gives you a relative path, the job is more difficult.

The find solution presented above is problematic in that a) it takes a very long time, b) does not guarantee file uniqueness.