I'm trying to find a way to properly get only the name of the directory that im in currently. If im in a directory called HW04, and pwd prints out home/zachary/HW04, how would i print out only HW04? Or is using pwd in order to get the name to much? any simpler methods?
Thanks in advance.
You could use echo $(basename $(pwd)) (or just basename $(pwd) if you want to print it); see basename(1), pwd(1) (perhaps a shell builtin) and the command substitution section of bash reference manual.
You might find some bash prompt configuration to set your prompt to tell you such things.
Can also use awk.
pwd | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}'
This will give you only the name of the current folder.
Example it will give you like this
Hey try using basename home/zachary/HW04
Using basename Using the basename command is the easiest and simplest way to extract the current directory:
basename /usr/local/bin
OutPut will be bin
However, it isn't useful in a shell script with changing directory variables. You can combine it with pwd inside backticks to make it more dynamic:
cd /usr/local/binbasename pwd
bin
Using parameter substitution with echo
The bash scripting language is full of nice tricks, including parameter substitution, which allows you to manipulate or expand variables. You can use parameter substitution with the ${var##pattern} syntax, which removes from $var the longest part of $Pattern that matches the front end of $var. Take a look at an example:
cd /var/log/squidecho ${PWD##*/} squid PWD is the environment variable that holds the current path, and ## is the instruction that tells the script to remove everything it finds up to */. In other words, it removes everything until the last /, leaving only the last string, which here is the current directory, squid. You can learn more about parameter substitution and other ways to manipulate variables in the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide.
Using awk and rev A more elaborate solution uses a combination of awk (a pattern-scanning utility) and rev (a utility that reverses lines from a file or from stdin):
cd /usr/share/cups/datapwd | rev | awk ââ¬âF / '{print $1}' | rev data It's a lot easier to understand this kind of script step by step:
pwd /usr/share/cups/data pwd | rev atad/supc/erahs/rsu/ pwd | rev | awk ââ¬âF / '{print $1}' atad pwd | rev | awk ââ¬âF / '{print $1}' | rev data The -F option indicates that you should separate by fields, where the field delimiter is /, and that you should print field 1.
Using sed Finally, you can parse pwd output in the stream editor sed using an elaborate regular expression. This approach may be educational, but it's not practical:
cd /home/smith/musicpwd | sed 's,^(./)\?([^/]),\2,' music For a better understanding of how this works, remove the escape character (), which is required for special characters such as "(":
sed 's,^(./)?([^/]),\2,'
pwd. In Unix-like and some other operating systems, the pwd command (print working directory) writes the full pathname of the current working directory to the standard output. The command is a shell builtin in most Unix shells such as Bourne shell, ash, bash, ksh, and zsh.
pwd Display the current working directory. Example: /home/foobar
pwd -P Display the current working directory physical path - without symbolic link name, if any. Example: If standing in a dir /home/symlinked, that is a symlink to /home/realdir, this would show /home/realdir
pwd -L Display the current working directory logical path - with symbolic link name, if any. Example: If standing in a dir /home/symlinked, that is a symlink to /home/realdir, this would show /home/symlinked
