File: coreutils.info, Node: dirname invocation, Next: pathchk invocation, Prev: basename invocation, Up: File name manipulation 18.2 ‘dirname’: Strip last file name component ============================================== ‘dirname’ prints all but the final slash-delimited component of each NAME. Slashes on either side of the final component are also removed. If the string contains no slash, ‘dirname’ prints ‘.’ (meaning the current directory). Synopsis: dirname [OPTION] NAME... NAME need not be a file name, but if it is, this operation effectively lists the directory that contains the final component, including the case when the final component is itself a directory. Together, ‘basename’ and ‘dirname’ are designed such that if ‘ls "$name"’ succeeds, then the command sequence ‘cd "$(dirname "$name")"; ls "$(basename "$name")"’ will, too. This works for everything except file names containing a trailing newline. POSIX allows the implementation to define the results if NAME is ‘//’. With GNU ‘dirname’, the result is ‘//’ on platforms where // is distinct from /, and ‘/’ on platforms where there is no difference. The program accepts the following option. Also see *note Common options::. ‘-z’ ‘--zero’ Output a zero byte (ASCII NUL) at the end of each line, rather than a newline. This option enables other programs to parse the output even when that output would contain data with embedded newlines. An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure. Examples: # Output "/usr/bin". dirname /usr/bin/sort dirname /usr/bin//.// # Output "dir1" followed by "dir2" dirname dir1/str dir2/str # Output ".". dirname stdio.h