BASENAME(1) MidnightBSD General Commands Manual BASENAME(1)

NAME

basename, dirname — return filename or directory portion of pathname

SYNOPSIS

basename string [suffix]
basename [−a] [−s suffix] string [...]
dirname string

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.

FOO=‘dirname /usr/bin/trail‘

SEE ALSO

csh(1), sh(1)

STANDARDS

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

MidnightBSD 0.3 April 18, 1994 MidnightBSD 0.3