How to run something from the folder the script is in

Question

Lets say I have a script called foo in some folder and a script called bar in the same folder. Say foo looks like this:

./bar

Now if I call ./foo, this will work fine, but if I am in another folder and call somefolder/foo, it will fail.

How can I get this to the point where ./bar is interpreted from the directory that foo is in?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 16 '11 at 05:04

2

foo could look like this:

cd "$(dirname "$0")"
./bar

answered Jul 16 '11 at 05:04

glenn jackman

The problem is that this will mess up all other arguments that are paths if you change the directory. But combining both statements gives the desired effect. – Martin Ueding Jul 31 '11 at 18:03

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

1

Answered pretty exhaustively for bash and other shells in:

edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

Community

answered Jul 16 '11 at 05:06

iandotkelly

Welcome to Stack Overflow. Don't answer a question with just a link, please read [how-to-answer]. When you see a question that's an exact duplicate of the earlier question, click on the `flag` button on the question, select `it doesn't belong here` then `exact duplicate` and enter the link to the earlier question. Also leave a comment to let others now (the flag remains invisible until a moderator has acted on it). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 16 '11 at 09:33
Noted. It may be possible that I did not have enough reputation to flag this - as you can tell I am new. – iandotkelly Jul 16 '11 at 13:36

2 Answers2