[linux] How to get full path of a file?

Is there an easy way I can print the full path of file.txt ?

file.txt = /nfs/an/disks/jj/home/dir/file.txt

The <command>

dir> <command> file.txt  

should print

/nfs/an/disks/jj/home/dir/file.txt

I know that this is an old question now, but just to add to the information here:

The Linux command which can be used to find the filepath of a command file, i.e.

$ which ls
/bin/ls

There are some caveats to this; please see https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-do-i-find-the-path-to-a-command-file/.

This is naive, but I had to make it to be POSIX compliant. Requires permission to cd into the file's directory.

#!/bin/sh
if [ ${#} = 0 ]; then
  echo "Error: 0 args. need 1" >&2
  exit 1
fi


if [ -d ${1} ]; then


  # Directory


  base=$( cd ${1}; echo ${PWD##*/} )
  dir=$( cd ${1}; echo ${PWD%${base}} )

  if [ ${dir} = / ]; then
    parentPath=${dir}
  else
    parentPath=${dir%/}
  fi

  if [ -z ${base} ] || [ -z ${parentPath} ]; then
    if [ -n ${1} ]; then
      fullPath=$( cd ${1}; echo ${PWD} )
    else
      echo "Error: unsupported scenario 1" >&2
      exit 1
    fi
  fi

elif [ ${1%/*} = ${1} ]; then

  if [ -f ./${1} ]; then


    # File in current directory

    base=$( echo ${1##*/} )
    parentPath=$( echo ${PWD} )

  else
    echo "Error: unsupported scenario 2" >&2
    exit 1
  fi
elif [ -f ${1} ] && [ -d ${1%/*} ]; then


  # File in directory

  base=$( echo ${1##*/} )
  parentPath=$( cd ${1%/*}; echo ${PWD} )

else
  echo "Error: not file or directory" >&2
  exit 1
fi

if [ ${parentPath} = / ]; then
  fullPath=${fullPath:-${parentPath}${base}}
fi

fullPath=${fullPath:-${parentPath}/${base}}

if [ ! -e ${fullPath} ]; then
  echo "Error: does not exist" >&2
  exit 1
fi

echo ${fullPath}

Beside "readlink -f" , another commonly used command:

$find  /the/long/path/but/I/can/use/TAB/to/auto/it/to/ -name myfile
/the/long/path/but/I/can/use/TAB/to/auto/it/to/myfile
$

This also give the full path and file name at console

Off-topic: This method just gives relative links, not absolute. The readlink -f command is the right one.

For Mac OS X, I replaced the utilities that come with the operating system and replaced them with a newer version of coreutils. This allows you to access tools like readlink -f (for absolute path to files) and realpath (absolute path to directories) on your Mac.

The Homebrew version appends a 'G' (for GNU Tools) in front of the command name -- so the equivalents become greadlink -f FILE and grealpath DIRECTORY.

Instructions for how to install the coreutils/GNU Tools on Mac OS X through Homebrew can be found in this StackExchange arcticle.

NB: The readlink -f and realpath commands should work out of the box for non-Mac Unix users.

You may use this function. If the file name is given without relative path, then it is assumed to be present in the current working directory:

abspath() { old=`pwd`;new=$(dirname "$1");if [ "$new" != "." ]; then cd $new; fi;file=`pwd`/$(basename "$1");cd $old;echo $file; }

Usage:

$ abspath file.txt
/I/am/in/present/dir/file.txt

Usage with relative path:

$ abspath ../../some/dir/some-file.txt
/I/am/in/some/dir/some-file.txt

With spaces in file name:

$ abspath "../../some/dir/another file.txt"
/I/am/in/some/dir/another file.txt

Another Linux utility, that does this job:

fname <file>

You could use the fpn (full path name) script:

% pwd
/Users/adamatan/bins/scripts/fpn

% ls
LICENSE   README.md fpn.py

% fpn *
/Users/adamatan/bins/scripts/fpn/LICENSE
/Users/adamatan/bins/scripts/fpn/README.md
/Users/adamatan/bins/scripts/fpn/fpn.py

fpn is not a standard Linux package, but it's a free and open github project and you could set it up in a minute.

fp () {
PHYS_DIR=`pwd -P`
RESULT=$PHYS_DIR/$1
echo $RESULT | pbcopy
echo $RESULT
}

Copies the text to your clipboard and displays the text on the terminal window.

:)

(I copied some of the code from another stack overflow answer but cannot find that answer anymore)

Usually:

find `pwd` | grep <filename>

Alternatively, just for the current folder:

find `pwd` -maxdepth 1 | grep <filename>

This will give you absolute path of the file:

find / -name file.txt 

For Mac OS, if you just want to get the path of a file in the finder, control click the file, and scroll down to "Services" at the bottom. You get many choices, including "copy path" and "copy full path". Clicking on one of these puts the path on the clipboard.

Works on Mac, Linux, *nix:

This will give you a quoted csv of all files in the current dir:

ls | xargs -I {} echo "$(pwd -P)/{}" | xargs | sed 's/ /","/g'

The output of this can be easily copied into a python list or any similar data structure.

This works with both Linux and Mac OSX ..

 echo $(pwd)$/$(ls file.txt)

In mac mentioned below line works. No need to add any fancy lines.

> pwd filename

The following usually does the trick:

 echo "$(cd "$(dirname "$1")" && pwd -P)/$(basename "$1")"

This will work for both file and folder:

getAbsolutePath(){
    [[ -d $1 ]] && { cd "$1"; echo "$(pwd -P)"; } || 
    { cd "$(dirname "$1")" || exit 1; echo "$(pwd -P)/$(basename "$1")"; }
}

In Mac OSX, do the following steps:

1. cd into the directory of the target file.
2. Type either of the following terminal commands.

ls "`pwd`/file.txt"
echo $(pwd)/file.txt

3. Replace file.txt with your actual file name.
4. Press Enter

In a similar scenario, I'm launching a cshell script from some other location. For setting the correct absolute path of the script so that it runs in the designated directory only, I'm using the following code:

set script_dir = `pwd`/`dirname $0`

$0 stores the exact string how the script was executed.

For e.g. if the script was launched like this: $> ../../test/test.csh, $script_dir will contain /home/abc/sandbox/v1/../../test

find / -samefile file.txt -print

Will find all the links to the file with the same inode number as file.txt

adding a -xdev flag will avoid find to cross device boundaries ("mount points"). (But this will probably cause nothing to be found if the find does not start at a directory on the same device as file.txt)

Do note that find can report multiple paths for a single filesystem object, because an Inode can be linked by more than one directory entry, possibly even using different names. For instance:

find /bin -samefile /bin/gunzip -ls

Will output:

12845178    4 -rwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         2251 feb  9  2012 /bin/uncompress
12845178    4 -rwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         2251 feb  9  2012 /bin/gunzip

To get full path of a file :

1) open your terminal in the folder containing your file, by pushing on the keyboard following keys:

CTRL + ALT + T

2) then type "pwd" (acronym of Print name of Working Directory):

your@device ~ $ pwd

that's all folks!

On Windows:

• Holding Shift and right clicking on a file in Windows Explorer gives you an option called Copy as Path. This will copy the full path of the file to clipboard.

On Linux:

• You can use the command realpath yourfile to get the full path of a file as suggested by others.

find $PWD -type f | grep "filename"

or

find $PWD -type f -name "*filename*"

If you are in the same directory as the file:

ls "`pwd`/file.txt"

Replace file.txt with your target filename.

You can save this in your shell.rc or just put in console

function absolute_path { echo "$PWD/$1"; }
alias ap="absolute_path"

example:

ap somefile.txt

will output

/home/user/somefile.txt

echo $(cd $(dirname "$1") && pwd -P)/$(basename "$1")

This is explanation of what is going on at @ZeRemz's answer:

1. This script get relative path as argument "$1"
2. Then we get dirname part of that path (you can pass either dir or file to this script): dirname "$1"
3. Then we cd "$(dirname "$1") into this relative dir
4. && pwd -P and get absolute path for it. -P option will avoid all symlinks
5. After that we append basename to absolute path: $(basename "$1")
6. As final step we echo it

Create a function like the below (echoes the absolute path of a file with pwd and adds the file at the end of the path:

abspath() { echo $(pwd "$1")/"$1"; }

Now you can just find any file path:

abspath myfile.ext

I know there's an easier way that this, but darned if I can find it...

jcomeau@intrepid:~$ python -c 'import os; print(os.path.abspath("cat.wav"))'
/home/jcomeau/cat.wav

jcomeau@intrepid:~$ ls $PWD/cat.wav
/home/jcomeau/cat.wav

I suppose you are using Linux.

I found a utility called realpath in coreutils 8.15.

realpath file.txt
/data/ail_data/transformed_binaries/coreutils/test_folder_realpath/file.txt

As per @styrofoam-fly and @arch-standton comments, realpath alone doesn't check for file existence, to solve this add the e argument: realpath -e file

the easiest way I found is

for i in `ls`; do echo "`pwd`/$i"; done

it works well for me

I like many of the answers already given, but I have found this really useful, especially within a script to get the full path of a file, including following symlinks and relative references such as . and ..

dirname `readlink -e relative/path/to/file`

Which will return the full path of the file from the root path onwards. This can be used in a script so that the script knows which path it is running from, which is useful in a repository clone which could be located anywhere on a machine.

basePath=`dirname \`readlink -e $0\``

I can then use the ${basePath} variable in my scripts to directly reference other scripts.

Hope this helps,

Dave

This worked pretty well for me. It doesn't rely on the file system (a pro/con depending on need) so it'll be fast; and, it should be portable to most any *NIX. It does assume the passed string is indeed relative to the PWD and not some other directory.

function abspath () {
   echo $1 | awk '\
      # Root parent directory refs to the PWD for replacement below
      /^\.\.\// { sub("^", "./") } \
      # Replace the symbolic PWD refs with the absolute PWD \
      /^\.\//   { sub("^\.", ENVIRON["PWD"])} \
      # Print absolute paths \
      /^\//   {print} \'
}