split a string into path and application

Question

If I have a string such as

/home/user/a/directory/myapp.app

or just

/home/user/myapp.app

how can I split this so that I just have two variables (the path and the application)

e.g.

path="/home/user/"
appl="myapp.app"

I've seen numerous examples of splitting strings, but how can I get just the last part, and combine all the rest?

Did you try dirname and basename? – Jan 12 '16 at 16:16 — , Jan 12 '16 at 16:16

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 12 '16 at 16:17

13

The commands basename and dirname can be used for that, for example:

$ basename /home/user/a/directory/myapp.app 
myapp.app
$ dirname /home/user/a/directory/myapp.app 
/home/user/a/directory

For more information, do not hesitate to do man basename and man dirname.

answered Jan 12 '16 at 16:17

perror

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1

You beat me to it :) LOL. – Rob Jan 12 '16 at 16:18
27 seconds faster than me. damn :) – Jan 12 '16 at 16:18
2

Sorry for that, I got luck I think. :-) – perror Jan 12 '16 at 16:18
cheers quys, I figured it would be something simple that I'd overlooked, but not quite that simple!! – IGGt Jan 12 '16 at 16:20
Somethimes, you just need to forget about strings, and use the manpages to quick look to what you nee ;) man -k "pathname" should be enough to help you on this. – Jan 12 '16 at 16:23

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

6

With any POSIX shell:

$ str=/home/user/a/directory/myapp.app
$ path=${str%/*}
$ app=${str##*/}
$ printf 'path is: %s\n' "$path"
path is: /home/user/a/directory
$ printf 'app is: %s\n' "$app"
app is: myapp.app

save you for two processes forking.

In case of /myapp.app, myapp.app and /path/to/myapp.app, basename/dirname are more graceful. See also this question for more discussion.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Jan 12 '16 at 16:21

cuonglm

153,898

split a string into path and application

2 Answers2