42

I have a variable which has the directory path, along with the file name. I want to extract the filename alone from the Unix directory path and store it in a variable.

fspec="/exp/home1/abc.txt"
jww
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Arav
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  • Possible duplicate of [Extract File Basename Without Path and Extension in Bash](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2664740/extract-file-basename-without-path-and-extension-in-bash) – tripleee Aug 22 '16 at 10:40

7 Answers7

78

Use the basename command to extract the filename from the path:

[/tmp]$ export fspec=/exp/home1/abc.txt 
[/tmp]$ fname=`basename $fspec`
[/tmp]$ echo $fname
abc.txt
codaddict
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27

bash to get file name

fspec="/exp/home1/abc.txt" 
filename="${fspec##*/}"  # get filename
dirname="${fspec%/*}" # get directory/path name

other ways

awk

$ echo $fspec | awk -F"/" '{print $NF}'
abc.txt

sed

$ echo $fspec | sed 's/.*\///'
abc.txt

using IFS

$ IFS="/"
$ set -- $fspec
$ eval echo \${${#@}}
abc.txt
ghostdog74
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10

You can simply do:

base=$(basename "$fspec")
William Pursell
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4

dirname "/usr/home/theconjuring/music/song.mp3" will yield /usr/home/theconjuring/music.

Berk Özbalcı
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3

bash:

fspec="/exp/home1/abc.txt"
fname="${fspec##*/}"
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
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1

Using bash "here string":

$ fspec="/exp/home1/abc.txt" 
$ tr  "/"  "\n"  <<< $fspec | tail -1
abc.txt
$ filename=$(tr  "/"  "\n"  <<< $fspec | tail -1)
$ echo $filename
abc.txt

The benefit of the "here string" is that it avoids the need/overhead of running an echo command. In other words, the "here string" is internal to the shell. That is:

$ tr <<< $fspec

as opposed to:

$ echo $fspec | tr
NetHead
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1
echo $fspec | tr "/" "\n"|tail -1
ghostdog74
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