How to get the directory of a sourced script in RedHat 6 with bash

Question

I'm trying to get the path of the script that I'm sourcing. I'm doing the following:

DIR="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"

Nevertheless I get

readlink: invalid option -- 'b'

I'm on a RedHat 6 machine using bash. Not sure if I'm suppose to do this in a different way.

If you are sourcing the script then $0 will be the name of the shell, e.g. /bin/bash. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4650/determining-path-to-sourced-shell-script?rq=1 — B Layer, Feb 02 '18 at 13:56
...and if your shell is a login shell, the name willl be something like -bash, hence the readlink command will ultimately be readlink -f -bash, and that explains the error message. — telcoM, Feb 05 '18 at 09:06

Kusalananda · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-05T13:20:08.127

1

Use ${BASH_SOURCE[-1]}:

script_dir=$( dirname "$( readlink -f "${BASH_SOURCE[-1]}" )" )

This is an array that contains the source files for the current shell function call stack, and the last element of it will be the source of the main script.

This ought to work regardless of whether the script was sourced with source or not.

The particular version of bash that you are using is version 4.2.1. Negative indexes in arrays (that references from the end of the array) were added in version 4.3. To get the same effect as using ${BASH_SOURCE[-1]} in a pre-4.3 version of bash, use

${BASH_SOURCE[ ${#BASH_SOURCE[@]} - 1 ]}

edited Feb 05 '18 at 13:20

answered Feb 02 '18 at 13:59

Kusalananda

333,661

it works for me but without the {}, like this $BASH_SOURCE[-1] – Blasco Feb 05 '18 at 09:03
1

@WooWapDaBug Are you saying it doesn't work with ${BASH_SOURCE[-1]}? Using $BASH_SOURCE[-1] would give you a file path (potentially the wrong one) with a trailing [-1] at the end. – Kusalananda Feb 05 '18 at 11:09
you are right. I don't know what was causing the problem then. – Blasco Feb 05 '18 at 11:57
but ${BASH_SOURCE[-1]} doesn't work. $BASH_SOURCE does work... ${BASH_SOURCE[-1]} seems empty – Blasco Feb 05 '18 at 11:58
@WooWapDaBug What is your version of bash? – Kusalananda Feb 05 '18 at 12:02
I'm just testing, and this doesn't work export test=(1 2 3) && echo ${test[-1]}. It reports -bash: test: bad array subscript. My bash version is GNU bash, version 4.1.2(1) – Blasco Feb 05 '18 at 12:05
@WooWapDaBug You can't export an array variable. I'll be back in a moment, I'm traveling... – Kusalananda Feb 05 '18 at 12:30
1

@WooWapDaBug Right. Some digging after release notes etc. resulted in an update to my answer. – Kusalananda Feb 05 '18 at 13:22
Great! Thank you, works like a charm. Do you know if these old method would still work in the newer versions? – Blasco Feb 05 '18 at 14:23
1

@WooWapDaBug It seems to work, yes. – Kusalananda Feb 05 '18 at 14:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 02 '18 at 13:43

0

If i correctly understand you, this should work:

whereami=$(pwd)
echo $whereami

answered Feb 02 '18 at 13:43

Burak Talha Bolat

29
4

The problem is that I could be executing the script from a different folder – Blasco Feb 02 '18 at 13:44
Hmm. Yes you are right. This code work if you in the same path wih script. – Burak Talha Bolat Feb 02 '18 at 13:45

How to get the directory of a sourced script in RedHat 6 with bash

2 Answers2