NAME
dirname – return directory portion of pathname
SYNOPSIS
dirname pathname
DESCRIPTION
dirname deletes the filename portion, beginning with the last slash (‘/’) character to the end of pathname, and writes the result to the standard output.
EXIT STATUS
The dirname utility exits 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/tail`
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The dirname utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.
HISTORY
The dirname utility first appeared as an expr(1) script in AT&T System III UNIX. It was reimplemented in C for 4.3BSD-Reno and reimplemented again using dirname(3) for OpenBSD 2.2.
AUTHORS
The original BSD version was written by Keith Bostic. The current OpenBSD version was written by Todd Miller ⟨[email protected]⟩.