Delete everything before last / in a file path

Question

I have many file paths in a file that look like so:

/home/rtz11/files/testfiles/547/prob547455_01

I want to use a bash script that will print all the filenames to the screen, basically whatever comes after the last /. I don't want to assume that it would always be the same length because it might not be.

Would there be a way to delete everything before the last /? Maybe a sed command?

Do you _also_ want to delete the last `/`, or only content prior to it? — Charles Duffy, Apr 21 '15 at 01:31

score 42 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 21 '15 at 01:29

Using sed for this is vast overkill -- bash has extensive string manipulation built in, and using this built-in support is far more efficient when operating on only a single line.

s=/home/rtz11/files/testfiles/547/prob547455_01
basename="${s##*/}"
echo "$basename"

This will remove everything from the beginning of the string greedily matching */. See the bash-hackers wiki entry for parameter expansion.

If you only want to remove everything prior to the last /, but not including it (a literal reading of your question, but also a generally less useful operation), you might instead want if [[ $s = */* ]]; then echo "/${s##*/}"; else echo "$s"; fi.

Excellent resource. Side note, if you need the Path to a file use `${PATHNAME%/*}`. — Ashesh, Feb 06 '16 at 13:25

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '15 at 01:36

20

awk '{print $NF}' FS=/ input-file

The 'print $NF' directs awk to print the last field of each line, and assigning FS=/ makes forward slash the field delimeter. In sed, you could do:

sed 's@.*/@@' input-file

which simply deletes everything up to and including the last /.

answered Apr 21 '15 at 01:36

William Pursell

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Note that the at sign `@` is merely [used here as a delimiter](https://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html#uh-2), replacing the usual forward slash `/`. The latter cannot be readily employed because it constitutes the target. Equivalent commands would be `sed s|.*/||'` or `sed 's:.*/::'`. – Serge Stroobandt Aug 23 '20 at 19:21

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 06 '20 at 13:06

2

Meandering but simply because I can remember the syntax I use:

cat file | rev | cut -d/ -f1 | rev

Many ways to skin a 'cat'. Ouch.

edited Jul 06 '20 at 13:06

Benjamin W.

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answered Apr 27 '19 at 23:01

unifex

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This is way too expensive, though it does the job well. – codeforester Oct 06 '21 at 00:16

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 18 '20 at 15:27

One more way:

Use the basename executable (command):

basename /path/with/many/slashes/and/file.extension

>file.extension

basename /path/with/many/slashes/and/file.extension .extension

OR

basename -s .extension /path/with/many/slashes/and/file.extension

> file

Delete everything before last / in a file path

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