NAME

dirname — return directory portion of pathname

SYNOPSIS

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:

SEE ALSO

basename(1), csh(1), sh(1), dirname(3)

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 <millert@openbsd.org>.