Given a string file path such as /foo/fizzbuzz.bar, how would I use bash to extract just the fizzbuzz portion of said string?
15 Answers
Here's how to do it with the # and % operators in Bash.
$ x="/foo/fizzbuzz.bar"
$ y=${x%.bar}
$ echo ${y##*/}
fizzbuzz
${x%.bar} could also be ${x%.*} to remove everything after the last dot or ${x%%.*} to remove everything after the first dot.
Example:
$ x="/foo/fizzbuzz.bar.quux"
$ y=${x%.*}
$ echo $y
/foo/fizzbuzz.bar
$ y=${x%%.*}
$ echo $y
/foo/fizzbuzz
Documentation can be found in the Bash manual. Look for ${parameter%word} and ${parameter%%word} trailing portion matching section.
12 Comments
look at the basename command:
NAME="$(basename /foo/fizzbuzz.bar .bar)"
instructs it to remove the suffix .bar, results in NAME=fizzbuzz
8 Comments
Using basename I used the following to achieve this:
for file in *; do
ext=${file##*.}
fname=`basename $file $ext`
# Do things with $fname
done;
This requires no a priori knowledge of the file extension and works even when you have a filename that has dots in it's filename (in front of it's extension); it does require the program basename though, but this is part of the GNU coreutils so it should ship with any distro.
4 Comments
fname=`basename $file .$ext`$file, $ext, and the backticked section (including the backticks themselves) in double quotes.The basename and dirname functions are what you're after:
mystring=/foo/fizzbuzz.bar
echo basename: $(basename "${mystring}")
echo basename + remove .bar: $(basename "${mystring}" .bar)
echo dirname: $(dirname "${mystring}")
Has output:
basename: fizzbuzz.bar
basename + remove .bar: fizzbuzz
dirname: /foo
3 Comments
mystring=$1 rather than the current constant value (which will suppress several warnings, being certain not to contain spaces/glob characters/etc), and address the issues it finds?echo "basename: $(basename "$mystring")" -- that way if mystring='/foo/*' you don't get the * replaced with a list of files in the current directory after basename finishes.Pure bash way:
~$ x="/foo/bar/fizzbuzz.bar.quux.zoom";
~$ y=${x/\/*\//};
~$ echo ${y/.*/};
fizzbuzz
This functionality is explained on man bash under "Parameter Expansion". Non bash ways abound: awk, perl, sed and so on.
EDIT: Works with dots in file suffixes and doesn't need to know the suffix (extension), but doesn’t work with dots in the name itself.
Comments
Using basename assumes that you know what the file extension is, doesn't it?
And I believe that the various regular expression suggestions don't cope with a filename containing more than one "."
The following seems to cope with double dots. Oh, and filenames that contain a "/" themselves (just for kicks)
To paraphrase Pascal, "Sorry this script is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter"
#!/usr/bin/perl
$fullname = $ARGV[0];
($path,$name) = $fullname =~ /^(.*[^\\]\/)*(.*)$/;
($basename,$extension) = $name =~ /^(.*)(\.[^.]*)$/;
print $basename . "\n";
1 Comment
In addition to the POSIX conformant syntax used in this answer,
basename string [suffix]
as in
basename /foo/fizzbuzz.bar .bar
GNU basename supports another syntax:
basename -s .bar /foo/fizzbuzz.bar
with the same result. The difference and advantage is that -s implies -a, which supports multiple arguments:
$ basename -s .bar /foo/fizzbuzz.bar /baz/foobar.bar
fizzbuzz
foobar
This can even be made filename-safe by separating the output with NUL bytes using the -z option, for example for these files containing blanks, newlines and glob characters (quoted by ls):
$ ls has*
'has'$'\n''newline.bar' 'has space.bar' 'has*.bar'
Reading into an array:
$ readarray -d $'\0' arr < <(basename -zs .bar has*)
$ declare -p arr
declare -a arr=([0]=$'has\nnewline' [1]="has space" [2]="has*")
readarray -d requires Bash 4.4 or newer. For older versions, we have to loop:
while IFS= read -r -d '' fname; do arr+=("$fname"); done < <(basename -zs .bar has*)
1 Comment
If you can't use basename as suggested in other posts, you can always use sed. Here is an (ugly) example. It isn't the greatest, but it works by extracting the wanted string and replacing the input with the wanted string.
echo '/foo/fizzbuzz.bar' | sed 's|.*\/\([^\.]*\)\(\..*\)$|\1|g'
Which will get you the output
fizzbuzz
1 Comment
If you want to keep just the filename with extension and strip the file path
$ x="myfile/hello/foo/fizzbuzz.bar"
$ echo ${x##*/}
$ fizzbuzz.bar
Explanation in Bash manual, see ${parameter##word}
Comments
Beware of the suggested perl solution: it removes anything after the first dot.
$ echo some.file.with.dots | perl -pe 's/\..*$//;s{^.*/}{}'
some
If you want to do it with perl, this works:
$ echo some.file.with.dots | perl -pe 's/(.*)\..*$/$1/;s{^.*/}{}'
some.file.with
But if you are using Bash, the solutions with y=${x%.*} (or basename "$x" .ext if you know the extension) are much simpler.
Comments
Combining the top-rated answer with the second-top-rated answer to get the filename without the full path:
$ x="/foo/fizzbuzz.bar.quux"
$ y=(`basename ${x%%.*}`)
$ echo $y
fizzbuzz
2 Comments
You can use
mv *<PATTERN>.jar "$(basename *<PATTERN>.jar <PATTERN>.jar).jar"
For e.g:- I wanted to remove -SNAPSHOT from my file name. For that used below command
mv *-SNAPSHOT.jar "$(basename *-SNAPSHOT.jar -SNAPSHOT.jar).jar"
${parameter%word}and${parameter%%word}in trailing portion matching section.