Get Parent Directory of a File in Bash

Getting the parent of a directory in Bash

dir=/home/smith/Desktop/Test
parentdir="$(dirname "$dir")"

Works if there is a trailing slash, too.

Get parent directory of shell script's directory

Run dirname twice (nested).

~$ dirname $PWD
/home
~$ dirname `dirname $PWD`
/
~$ 

How do you get the outermost parent directory in a file path in bash?

I'm a bit confused, I think this is all you want.

#!/bin/bash
echo "$1" | sed -e 's=^/==' -e 's=/.*=='

Or

#!/bin/bash
path=${1#/}
echo "${path%%/*}"

With the first case, since it is a one-liner, you really probably don't need an external script.

If the path can have a leading . (e.g. ./file/path/can/be/huge.bash), this will need to be slightly modified.

If the path can be huge, the last thing you surely want is to loop.

Retrieve parent directory of script

How about using dirname twice?

APP_ROOT="$(dirname "$(dirname "$(readlink -fm "$0")")")"

The quoting desaster is only necessary to guard against whitespace in paths. Otherwise it would be more pleasing to the eye:

APP_ROOT=$(dirname $(dirname $(readlink -fm $0)))

How to extract the parent folder in bash script?

Like this, using pre-defined variable PWD:

value="$PWD"
echo "you are here :$value"
echo "the folder is: ${value##*/}"
echo "the parent folder is $(basename "${PWD%/*}")"

You can replace the last line with:

dir="${PWD%/*}"
echo "the parent folder is ${dir##*/}"

The backquote (`) is used in the old-style command substitution, e.g.

foo=`command`

The foo=$(command) syntax is recommended instead. Backslash handling inside $() is less surprising, and $() is easier to nest. See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/082

How to use 'find' to return parent directory

one way of many:

find /   -name 'myfile' -type f -exec dirname {} \;

How do I print all the parent directories in Bash

File:

$ cat subdirs
./dir1/dir2/dir3
./dir4/dir5

Script (ugly a bit, but works fine):

#!/bin/bash

while read line
do
    counter=$(echo "${line}" | grep -o '/' | wc -l)
    i=1
    j=$(($i + 1))
    echo "Original string: ${line}"
    echo "Its parent directories:"
    while [ "${counter}" -gt 0 ]
    do
            echo "${line}" | cut -d'/' -f$i-$j
            counter=$(($counter - 1))
            j=$(($j + 1))
    done
    echo "Next one if exists..."
    echo ""
done < subdirs

Output:

Original string: ./dir1/dir2/dir3
Its parent directories:
./dir1
./dir1/dir2
./dir1/dir2/dir3
Next one if exists...

Original string: ./dir4/dir5
Its parent directories:
./dir4
./dir4/dir5
Next one if exists...

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