dirname1
Return filename or directory portion of pathname
Part of basename(1).
Usage
basename string
[suffix]
basename [-a]
[-s
suffix]
string
[]
dirname string
[]
Overview
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`
Releases
163 releases since Mac OS X 10.0; the text changed 2 times.