Basename

basename is a standard UNIX computer program, when basename is given a pathname, it will delete any prefix up to the last slash ('/') character and return the result. basename is described in the Single UNIX Specification and is a primarily used in shell scripts.

Usage

The Single UNIX Specification specification for basename is. basename string [suffix]

:string::A pathname:suffix::If specified, basename will also delete the suffix.

Example

$ basename /usr/home/jsmith/basename.wiki ki basename.wi

Performance

Since basename accepts only one operand, it's usage within the inner loop of shell scripts can be detrimental to performance. Consider

while read file; do basename "$file" done < "some-input"

The above excerpt would cause a separate process invocation for each line of input. For this reason, sed is typically used instead:

sed 's/.*///' < "some-input"

See also

* List of Unix utilities
* dirname

External links

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