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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Assigning basename result to another variable Post 303021566 by Don Cragun on Monday 13th of August 2018 12:44:30 AM
Old 08-13-2018
Any time you want to assign a value to a variable in a shell script using Bourne shell syntax (you haven't told us what operating system and shell you're using, but from what you have shown us I assume you're using a shell that is based on Bourne shell syntax), you use a shell variable assignment statement, i.e.:
Code:
variable=value

If you want to get the next to the last component of a pathname containing at least two components using the dirname and basename utilities, you could use something like:
Code:
pathname=/path/name/to/file
next2last=$(basename "$(dirname "$pathname")")
printf 'Extracted directory name is: "%s"\n' "$next2last"

which produces the output:
Code:
Extracted directory name is: "to"

With any shell that supports the shell variable expansions required by the POSIX standards, one can get a faster response avoiding the two subshells and two invocations of external utilities by just using features of the shell programming language:
Code:
pathname=/path/name/to/file
pathwithoutfinal=${pathname%/*}
printf 'After performing equivalent of dirname $pathname, we have: "%s"\n' "$pathwithoutfinal"
next2last=${pathwithoutfinal##*/}
printf 'Extracted directory name is: "%s"\n' "$next2last"

which produces the output:
Code:
After performing equivalent of dirname $pathname, we have: "/path/name/to"
Extracted directory name is: "to"

Note also that the comments in your code do not come close to describing what the code you have shown us actually does. This makes it hard to figure out what you are really trying to do. For example, your comments talk about removing extensions, but none of the code you have shown us makes any attempt to remove filename extensions. Smilie
 

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basename(1)							   User Commands						       basename(1)

NAME
basename, dirname - deliver portions of path names SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/basename string [suffix] /usr/xpg4/bin/basename string [suffix] dirname string DESCRIPTION
The basename utility deletes any prefix ending in / and the suffix (if present in string) from string, and prints the result on the stan- dard output. It is normally used inside substitution marks (``) within shell procedures. /usr/bin The suffix is a pattern defined on the expr(1) manual page. /usr/xpg4/bin The suffix is a string with no special significance attached to any of the characters it contains. The dirname utility delivers all but the last level of the path name in string. EXAMPLES
Example 1: Setting environment variables The following example, invoked with the argument /home/sms/personal/mail sets the environment variable NAME to the file named mail and the environment variable MYMAILPATH to the string /home/sms/personal: example% NAME=`basename $HOME/personal/mail` example% MYMAILPATH=`dirname $HOME/personal/mail` Example 2: Compiling a file and moving the output This shell procedure, invoked with the argument /usr/src/bin/cat.c, compiles the named file and moves the output to cat in the current directory: example% cc $1 example% mv a.out `basename $1 .c` ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of basename and dirname: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: 0 Successful completion. >0 An error occurred. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: /usr/bin +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ /usr/xpg4/bin +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWxcu4 | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Standard | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
expr(1), basename(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5) SunOS 5.10 18 Mar 1997 basename(1)
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