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up vote 4 down vote favorite

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?

share|improve this question
1  
Did you try dirname and basename? – yeti 4 hours ago
up vote 8 down vote accepted

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.

share|improve this answer
1  
You beat me to it :) LOL. – Rob 4 hours ago
    
27 seconds faster than me. damn :) – nwildner 4 hours ago
2  
Sorry for that, I got luck I think. :-) – perror 4 hours ago
    
cheers quys, I figured it would be something simple that I'd overlooked, but not quite that simple!! – IGGt 4 hours ago
    
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. – nwildner 4 hours ago
up vote 5 down vote

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.

share|improve this answer
    
@StéphaneChazelas: Yes, that's why I linked to the question that Gilles pointed it out. Added to the answer. Thanks. – cuonglm 3 hours ago

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