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NAME

basename, dirname — return filename or directory portion of pathname

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The basename utility deletes any prefix ending with the last slash ‘/’ character present in string (after first stripping trailing slashes), and a suffix, if given. The suffix is not stripped if it is identical to the remaining characters in string. The resulting filename is written to the standard output. A non-existent suffix is ignored. If -a is specified, then every argument is treated as a string as if basename were invoked with just one argument. If -s is specified, then the suffix is taken as its argument, and all other arguments are treated as a string.

The dirname utility deletes the filename portion, beginning with the last slash ‘/’ character to the end of string (after first stripping trailing slashes), and writes the result to the standard output.

EXIT STATUS

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

EXAMPLES

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

SEE ALSO

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

STANDARDS

The basename and dirname utilities are expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”) compatible.

HISTORY

The basename and dirname utilities first appeared in 4.4BSD.