How can I set the current working directory to the directory of the script in Bash

Question

I m writing a Bash script  I need the current working directory to always be the directory that the script is located in  The default behavior is that the current working directory in the script is that of the shell from which I run it  but I do not want this behavior

User · Answer

The following also works   cd    0        The syntax is thoroughly described in this StackOverflow answer

User · Answer

The accepted answer works well for scripts that have not been symlinked elsewhere  such as into  PATH       bin bash cd    dirname   0      However if the script is run via a symlink    ln -sv   project script sh   bin      bin script sh   This will cd into the   bin  directory and not the   project  directory  which will probably break your script if the purpose of the cd is to include dependencies relative to   project   The symlink safe answer is below      bin bash cd    dirname    readlink -f    BASH SOURCE 0          readlink -f is required to resolve the absolute path of the potentially symlinked file    The quotes are required to support filepaths that could potentially contain whitespace  bad practice  but its not safe to assume this won t be the case

User · Answer

bin bash cd    dirname   0

User · Answer

Get the real path to your script  if   -L  0     then     ME   readlink  0  else     ME  0 fi DIR   dirname  ME     This is answer to the same my question here  Get the name of the directory where a script is executed

User · Answer

I take this and it works     bin bash cd  quot   dirname  quot  0 quot   quot  CUR DIR   pwd

User · Answer

cd    dirname    BASH SOURCE 0        It s easy  It works

User · Answer

echo  PWD   PWD is an environment variable

User · Answer

This script seems to work for me      bin bash mypath  realpath  0  cd  dirname  mypath  pwd   The pwd command line echoes the location of the script as the current working directory no matter where I run it from

User · Answer

If you just need to print present working directory then you can follow this     vim test     bin bash pwd  wq to save the test file    Give execute permission   chmod u x test   Then execute the script by   test then you can see the present working directory

User · Answer

cd   dirname   readlink -f   0

User · Answer

Try the following simple one-liners     For all UNIX OSX Linux  dir   cd -P --    dirname --   0     amp  amp  pwd -P    Bash  dir   cd -P --    dirname --    BASH SOURCE 0       amp  amp  pwd -P    Note  A double dash  --  is used in commands to signify the end of command options  so files containing dashes or other special characters won t break the command   Note  In Bash  use   BASH SOURCE 0   in favor of  0  otherwise the path can break when sourcing it  source        For Linux  Mac and other  BSD   cd    dirname    realpath   0         Note  realpath should be installed in the most popular Linux distribution by default   like Ubuntu   but in some it can be missing  so you have to install it   Note  If you re using Bash  use   BASH SOURCE 0   in favor of  0  otherwise the path can break when sourcing it  source      Otherwise you could try something like that  it will use the first existing tool    cd    dirname    readlink -f   0     realpath   0          For Linux specific   cd    dirname    readlink -f   0          Using GNU readlink on  BSD Mac   cd    dirname    greadlink -f   0        Note  You need to have coreutils installed  e g  1  Install Homebrew  2  brew install coreutils      In bash  In bash you can use Parameter Expansions to achieve that  like   cd    0        but it doesn t work if the script is run from the same directory   Alternatively you can define the following function in bash   realpath            1          amp  amp  echo   1     echo   PWD   1          This function takes 1 argument  If argument has already absolute path  print it as it is  otherwise print  PWD variable   filename argument  without    prefix    or here is the version taken from Debian  bashrc file   function realpath         f        if   -d   f     then         base            dir   f      else         base     basename   f            dir   dirname   f       fi     dir   cd   dir   amp  amp   bin pwd      echo   dir base        Related    How to detect the current directory in which I run my shell script  Get the source directory of a Bash script from within the script itself Bash script absolute path with OS X Reliable way for a Bash script to get the full path to itself   See also   How can I get the behavior of GNU  39 s readlink -f on a Mac

[bash] How can I set the current working directory to the directory of the script in Bash?

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