Ubuntu – When writing a bash script, how to get the absolute path of the location of the current file

bashcommand linepathsscripts

Suppose I have a bash file called myBash.bash. It resides in: 

/myDirect/myFolder/myBash.bash

Now I want to use the string /myDirect/myFolder (the location of myBash.bash) inside the script. Is there a command I can use to find this location?

Edit: The idea is that I want to set-up a zip-folder with code that can be started by a bash script inside that zip-file. I know the relative file-paths of the code inside that zip-file, but not the absolute paths, and I need those. One way would be to hard-code in the path, or require the path of the file to be given as a variable. However I would find it easier if it was possible for the bash-file to figure out where it is on its own and then create the relevant paths to the other file from its knowledge of the structure of the zip-file.

Best Answer

You can get the full path like:

realpath "$0"

And as pointed out by Serg you can use dirname to strip the filename like this

dirname "$(realpath $0)"

or even better to prevent awkward quoting and word-splitting with difficult filenames:

temp=$( realpath "$0"  ) && dirname "$temp"

Much better than my earlier idea which was to parse it (I knew there would be a better way!)

realpath "$0" | sed 's|\(.*\)/.*|\1|'

Notes

  • realpath returns the actual path of a file
  • $0 is this file (the script)
  • s|old|new| replace old with new
  • \(.*\)/ save any characters before / for later
  • \1 the saved part
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