How can I get the source directory of a Bash script from within the script itself

Question

How do I get the path of the directory in which a Bash script is located  inside that script  I want to use a Bash script as a launcher for another application  I want to change the working directory to the one where the Bash script is located  so I can operate on the files in that directory  like so      application

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I usually use  dirname   which  BASH SOURCE

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Python was mentioned a few times  Here is the JavaScript  i e   Node js  alternative  baseDirRelative   dirname  quot  0 quot   baseDir   node -e  quot console log require  path   resolve   baseDirRelative    quot     Get absolute path using Node js  echo  baseDir

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This gets the current working directory on Mac  OS  X  v10 6 6  Snow  Leopard   DIR   cd  quot   dirname  quot  0 quot   quot   pwd

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None of these other answers worked for a Bash script launched by Finder in OS  X  I ended up using  SCRIPT LOC  quot  ps -p      sed  PID d   sed s    Network   Network     sed s    Volumes   Volumes    quot   It is not pretty  but it gets the job done

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Try using   real   realpath   dirname  0

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Use a combination of readlink to canonicalize the name  with a bonus of following it back to its source if it is a symlink  and dirname to extract the directory name  script  quot  readlink -f  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot   quot  dir  quot  dirname  quot  script quot   quot

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There is no 100  portable and reliable way to request a path to a current script directory  Especially between different backends like Cygwin  MinGW  MSYS  Linux  etc  This issue was not properly and completely resolved in Bash for ages  For example  this could not be resolved if you want to request the path after the source command to make nested inclusion of another Bash script which is in turn use the same source command to include another Bash script and so on  In case of the source command  I suggest to replace the source command with something like this  function include       if    -n  quot  CURRENT SCRIPT DIR quot      then     local dir path     get directory from  CURRENT SCRIPT DIR  1   depends if  1 is absolute path or relative         local include file path       else     local dir path     request the directory from the  quot  1 quot  argument using one of answered here methods        local include file path       fi       push  CURRENT SCRIPT DIR in to stack       export CURRENT SCRIPT DIR     export current script directory using  dir path       source  quot  include file path quot        pop  CURRENT SCRIPT DIR from stack        From now on  the use of include      is based on previous CURRENT SCRIPT DIR in your script  This only works when you can replace all source commands by include command  If you can t  then you have no choice  At least until developers of the Bash interpreter make an explicit command to request the current running script directory path  My own closest implementation to this  https   sourceforge net p tacklelib tacklelib HEAD tree trunk bash tacklelib bash entry  search for the tkl include function

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The top response does not work in all cases    As I had problems with the BASH SOURCE with the included  cd  approach on some very fresh and also on less fresh installed Ubuntu  16 04  Xenial Xerus  systems when invoking the shell script by means of  quot sh my script sh quot   I tried out something different that as of now seems to run quite smoothly for my purposes  The approach is a bit more compact in the script and is further much lesser cryptic feeling  This alternate approach uses the external applications  realpath  and  dirname  from the coreutils package   Okay  not anyone likes the overhead of invoking secondary processes - but when seeing the multi-line scripting for resolving the true object it won t be that bad either having it solve in a single binary usage   So let   s see one example of those alternate solution for the described task of querying the true absolute path to a certain file  SCRIPT  realpath -s  0  SCRIPTPATH  dirname  SCRIPT   Or when having the chance of using paths with spaces  or maybe other special characters   SCRIPT  realpath -s  quot  0 quot   SCRIPTPATH  dirname  quot  SCRIPT quot    Indeed  if you don   t need the value of the SCRIPT variable then you might be able to merge this two-liner into even a single line  But why really shall you spend the effort for this

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Look at the test at bottom with weird directory names    To change the working directory to the one where the Bash script is located  you should try this simple  tested and verified with shellcheck solution      bin bash -- cd    dirname    0          exit 2   The test     ls  application   mkdir    printf   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47testdir         mv application  testdir   ln -s  testdir    printf   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47symlink         ls -lb total 4 lrwxrwxrwx 1 jay stacko   46 Mar 30 20 44  001 002 003 004 005 006 a b t n v f r 016 017 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037        amp  symlink - gt   001 002 003 004 005 006 a b t n v f r 016 017 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037        amp  testdir drwxr-xr-x 2 jay stacko 4096 Mar 30 20 44  001 002 003 004 005 006 a b t n v f r 016 017 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037        amp  testdir    testdir application  amp  amp  printf  SUCCESS n     SUCCESS    symlink application  amp  amp  printf  SUCCESS n     SUCCESS

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SCRIPT DIR    cd   0      amp  amp  pwd -P

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Here is the simple  correct way   actual path   readlink -f    BASH SOURCE 0     script dir   dirname   actual path     Explanation      BASH SOURCE 0   - the full path to the script  The value of this will be correct even when the script is being sourced  e g  source  lt  echo  echo  0   prints bash  while replacing it with   BASH SOURCE 0   will print the full path of the script   Of course  this assumes you re OK taking a dependency on Bash   readlink -f - Recursively resolves any symlinks in the specified path  This is a GNU extension  and not available on  for example  BSD systems  If you re running a Mac  you can use Homebrew to install GNU coreutils and supplant this with greadlink -f  And of course dirname gets the parent directory of the path

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I don t think this is as easy as others have made it out to be   pwd doesn t work  as the current directory is not necessarily the directory with the script    0 doesn t always have the information either   Consider the following three ways to invoke a script     script   usr bin script  script   In the first and third ways  0 doesn t have the full path information   In the second and third  pwd does not work   The only way to get the directory in the third way would be to run through the path and find the file with the correct match   Basically the code would have to redo what the OS does   One way to do what you are asking would be to just hardcode the data in the  usr share directory  and reference it by its full path   Data shoudn t be in the  usr bin directory anyway  so this is probably the thing to do

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How to obtain the full file path  full directory  and base filename of any script being run itself For many cases  all you need to acquire is the full path to the script you just called  This can be easily accomplished using realpath  Note that realpath is part of GNU coreutils  If you don t have it already installed  it comes default on Ubuntu   you can install it with sudo apt update  amp  amp  sudo apt install coreutils  get script path sh     bin bash  FULL PATH TO SCRIPT  quot   realpath  quot  0 quot   quot     You can then also get the full path to the directory  and the base   filename  like this  SCRIPT DIRECTORY  quot   dirname  quot  FULL PATH TO SCRIPT quot   quot  SCRIPT FILENAME  quot   basename  quot  FULL PATH TO SCRIPT quot   quot     Now print it all out echo  quot FULL PATH TO SCRIPT     quot  FULL PATH TO SCRIPT  quot  quot  echo  quot SCRIPT DIRECTORY        quot  SCRIPT DIRECTORY  quot  quot  echo  quot SCRIPT FILENAME         quot  SCRIPT FILENAME  quot  quot   Example output     GS dev eRCaGuy hello world bash    get script path sh  FULL PATH TO SCRIPT    quot  home gabriel GS dev eRCaGuy hello world bash get script path sh quot  SCRIPT DIRECTORY       quot  home gabriel GS dev eRCaGuy hello world bash quot  SCRIPT FILENAME        quot get script path sh quot    Note that realpath also successfully walks down symbolic links to determine and point to their targets rather than pointing to the symbolic link  The code above is now part of my eRCaGuy hello world repo in this file here  bash get script path sh  References   How to retrieve absolute path given relative

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The following will return the current directory of the script   works if it s sourced  or not sourced works if run in the current directory  or some other directory  works if relative directories are used  works with bash  not sure of other shells     tmp a b c       test sh  tmp a b c   tmp a b c      tmp a b c test sh  tmp a b c   tmp a b c     test sh  tmp a b c   tmp a b c    tmp a b c test sh  tmp a b c   tmp a b c   cd         tmp a b c test sh  tmp a b c              tmp a b c test sh  tmp a b c       tmp a b c test sh  tmp a b c            tmp a b c test sh  tmp a b c   test sh     usr bin env bash    snagged from  https   stackoverflow com a 51264222 26510 function toAbsPath       local target     target   1       if     target            then         echo    pwd       elif     target             then         echo    dirname    pwd         else         echo    cd    dirname   1     pwd    basename   1        fi    function getScriptDir      local SOURCED   local RESULT    return 0 2 gt  dev null   amp  amp  SOURCED 1    SOURCED 0    if     SOURCED      1      then     RESULT   dirname   1     else     RESULT     cd     dirname    BASH SOURCE 0        gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp  pwd      fi   toAbsPath   RESULT     SCRIPT DIR   getScriptDir   0   echo   SCRIPT DIR

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The key part is that I am reducing the scope of the problem  I forbid indirect execution of the script via the path  as in  bin sh  script path relative to path component    This can be detected because  0 will be a relative path which does not resolve to any file relative to the current folder   I believe that direct execution using the    mechanism always results in an absolute  0  including when the script is found on the path  I also require that the pathname and any pathnames along a chain of symbolic links only contain a reasonable subset of characters  notably not  n   gt     or     This is required for the parsing logic  There are a few more implicit expectations which I will not go into  look at this answer   and I do not attempt to handle deliberate sabotage of  0  so consider any security implications    I expect this to work on almost any Unix-like system with a Bourne-like  bin sh     bin sh       path  quot   0  quot      while test -n  quot   path  quot   do           Make sure we have at least one slash and no leading dash          expr  quot   path  quot       gt   dev null    path  quot     path  quot            Filter out bad characters in the path name          expr  quot   path  quot     quot       lt  gt     quot   gt   dev null  amp  amp  exit 1           Catch embedded new-lines and non-existing  or path-relative  files             0 should always be absolute when scripts are invoked through  quot    quot           test  quot  ls -l -d  quot   path  quot  2 gt   dev null   wc -l  quot  -eq 1    exit 1           Change to the folder containing the file to resolve relative links          folder  expr  quot   path  quot     quot                     quot      exit 1         path  expr  quot x  ls -l -d  quot   path  quot    quot     quot    gt    - gt         quot           cd  quot   folder  quot            If the last path was not a link then we are in the target folder          test -n  quot   path  quot     pwd     done

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This is what I crafted throughout the years to use as a header on my Bash scripts     BASE BRAIN - Get where you re from and who you are  MYPID    ORIGINAL DIR  quot   pwd  quot    This is not a hot air balloon ride   fa  quot  0 quot    First Assumption ta    Temporary Assumption wa    Weighed Assumption while true  do        quot   fa 0 1  quot     quot   quot     amp  amp  wa  0  amp  amp  break        quot   fa 0 2  quot     quot    quot     amp  amp  ta  quot   ORIGINAL DIR    fa 2  quot   amp  amp    -e  quot  ta quot     amp  amp  wa  quot  ta quot   amp  amp  break     ta  quot   ORIGINAL DIR    fa  quot   amp  amp    -e  quot  ta quot     amp  amp  wa  quot  ta quot   amp  amp  break done SW  quot  wa quot  SWDIR  quot   dirname  quot  wa quot   quot  SWBIN  quot   basename  quot  wa quot   quot  unset ta fa wa       -e  quot  SWDIR  SWBIN quot         -z  quot  SW quot       amp  amp  echo  quot I could not find my way around    possible bug in the TOP script quot   amp  amp  exit 1  At this point  your variables SW  SWDIR  and SWBIN contain what you need

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dirname    readlink -f   BASH SOURCE

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The chosen answer works very well  I m posting my solution for anyone looking for shorter alternatives that still addresses sourcing  executing  full paths  relative paths  and symlinks  Finally  this will work on macOS  given that it cannot be assumed that GNU s coreutils  version of readlink is available  The gotcha is that it s not using Bash  but it is easy to use in a Bash script  While the OP did not place any constraints on the language of the solution  it s probably best that most have stayed within the Bash world  This is just an alternative  and possibly an unpopular one  PHP is available on macOS by default  and installed on a number of other platforms  though not necessarily by default  I realize this is a shortcoming  but I ll leave this here for any people coming from search engines  anyway  export SOURCE DIRECTORY  quot   php -r  echo dirname realpath  argv 1      --  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot   quot

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Here is a POSIX compliant one-liner   SCRIPT PATH  dirname   0    SCRIPT PATH  eval  cd    SCRIPT PATH    amp  amp  pwd      test echo  SCRIPT PATH

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pwd can be used to find the current working directory  and dirname to find the directory of a particular file  command that was run  is  0  so dirname  0 should give you the directory of the current script   However  dirname gives precisely the directory portion of the filename  which more likely than not is going to be relative to the current working directory  If your script needs to change directory for some reason  then the output from dirname becomes meaningless  I suggest the following     bin bash  reldir  dirname  0  cd  reldir directory  pwd   echo  quot Directory is  directory quot   This way  you get an absolute  rather than a relative directory  Since the script will be run in a separate Bash instance  there isn t any need to restore the working directory afterwards  but if you do want to change back in your script for some reason  you can easily assign the value of pwd to a variable before you change directory  for future use  Although just cd  dirname  0   solves the specific scenario in the question  I find having the absolute path to more more useful generally

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This should do it   DIR    dirname    readlink -f   0        This works with symlinks and spaces in path   See the man pages for dirname and readlink   From the comment track it seems not to work with Mac OS  I have no idea why that is  Any suggestions

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bin bash  DIR  quot    cd  quot    dirname  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot    quot   gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp  pwd   quot   is a useful one-liner which will give you the full directory name of the script no matter where it is being called from  It will work as long as the last component of the path used to find the script is not a symlink  directory links are OK    If you also want to resolve any links to the script itself  you need a multi-line solution     bin bash  SOURCE  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot  while   -h  quot  SOURCE quot     do   resolve  SOURCE until the file is no longer a symlink   DIR  quot    cd -P  quot    dirname  quot  SOURCE quot    quot   gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp  pwd   quot    SOURCE  quot   readlink  quot  SOURCE quot   quot        SOURCE           amp  amp  SOURCE  quot  DIR  SOURCE quot    if  SOURCE was a relative symlink  we need to resolve it relative to the path where the symlink file was located done DIR  quot    cd -P  quot    dirname  quot  SOURCE quot    quot   gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp  pwd   quot   This last one will work with any combination of aliases  source  bash -c  symlinks  etc  Beware  if you cd to a different directory before running this snippet  the result may be incorrect  Also  watch out for  CDPATH gotchas  and stderr output side effects if the user has smartly overridden cd to redirect output to stderr instead  including escape sequences  such as when calling update terminal cwd  gt  amp 2 on Mac   Adding  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1 at the end of your cd command will take care of both possibilities  To understand how it works  try running this more verbose form     bin bash  SOURCE  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot  while   -h  quot  SOURCE quot     do   resolve  SOURCE until the file is no longer a symlink   TARGET  quot   readlink  quot  SOURCE quot   quot    if     TARGET           then     echo  quot SOURCE   SOURCE  is an absolute symlink to   TARGET  quot      SOURCE  quot  TARGET quot    else     DIR  quot    dirname  quot  SOURCE quot    quot      echo  quot SOURCE   SOURCE  is a relative symlink to   TARGET   relative to   DIR   quot      SOURCE  quot  DIR  TARGET quot    if  SOURCE was a relative symlink  we need to resolve it relative to the path where the symlink file was located   fi done echo  quot SOURCE is   SOURCE  quot  RDIR  quot    dirname  quot  SOURCE quot    quot  DIR  quot    cd -P  quot    dirname  quot  SOURCE quot    quot   gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp  pwd   quot  if    quot  DIR quot      quot  RDIR quot     then   echo  quot DIR   RDIR  resolves to   DIR  quot  fi echo  quot DIR is   DIR  quot   And it will print something like  SOURCE    scriptdir sh  is a relative symlink to  sym2 scriptdir sh   relative to      SOURCE is    sym2 scriptdir sh  DIR    sym2  resolves to   home ubuntu dotfiles fo fo real real1 real2  DIR is   home ubuntu dotfiles fo fo real real1 real2

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pushd    gt   dev null SCRIPT PATH  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot  if    -h  quot   SCRIPT PATH  quot      then   while   -h  quot   SCRIPT PATH  quot      do cd  dirname  quot  SCRIPT PATH quot      SCRIPT PATH  readlink  quot   SCRIPT PATH  quot    done fi cd  dirname   SCRIPT PATH    gt   dev null SCRIPT PATH  pwd   popd   gt   dev null  It works for all versions  including  when called via multiple depth soft link  when the file it when script called by command  quot source quot  aka    dot  operator  when arg  0 is modified from caller   quot   script quot   quot  full path to script quot   quot  some path       another path script quot   quot   some folder script quot   Alternatively  if the Bash script itself is a relative symlink you want to follow it and return the full path of the linked-to script  pushd    gt   dev null SCRIPT PATH  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot   if    -h  quot   SCRIPT PATH  quot     then   while   -h  quot   SCRIPT PATH  quot     do cd  dirname  quot  SCRIPT PATH quot    SCRIPT PATH  readlink  quot   SCRIPT PATH  quot    done fi cd  dirname   SCRIPT PATH    gt   dev null SCRIPT PATH  pwd   popd   gt   dev null  SCRIPT PATH is given in full path  no matter how it is called  Just make sure you locate this at start of the script

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I would use something like this    Retrieve the full pathname of the called script scriptPath   which  0     Check whether the path is a link or not if   -L  scriptPath    then        It is a link then retrieve the target path and get the directory name     sourceDir   dirname   readlink -f  scriptPath    else        Otherwise just get the directory name of the script path     sourceDir   dirname  scriptPath   fi

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Here s a command that works under either Bash or zsh  and whether executed stand-alone or sourced    -n  quot  ZSH VERSION quot     amp  amp  this dir   dirname  quot       - x  quot            this dir   dirname  quot   BASH SOURCE 0  - 0  quot    How it works The zsh current file expansion        - x        - x  in zsh expands to the path of the currently-executing file  The fallback substitution operator  - You know already that        substitutes variables inside of strings  You might not know that certain operations are possible  in both Bash and zsh  on the variables during substitution  like the fallback expansion operator  -    x ok   echo  quot   x  quot  ok    echo  quot   x -fallback  quot  ok    x    echo  quot   x -fallback  quot  fallback    y yvalue   echo  quot   x - y  quot  yvalue  The  x prompt escape code Next  we ll introduce prompt escape codes  a zsh-only feature  In zsh   x will expand to the path of the file  but normally this is only when doing expansion for prompt strings  To enable those codes in our substitution  we can add a     flag before the variable name    cat apath test sh fpath  x echo  quot      fpath  quot     source apath test sh apath test sh    cd apath   source test sh test sh  An unlikely match  the percent escape and the fallback What we have so far works  but it would be tidier to avoid creating the extra fpath variable  Instead of putting  x in fpath  we can use  - and put  x in the fallback string    cat test sh echo  quot       - x  quot     source test sh test sh  Note that we normally would put a variable name between     and  -  but we left it blank  The variable with a blank name can t be declared or set  so the fallback is always triggered  Finishing up  what about print -P  x  Now we almost have the directory of our script  We could have used print -P  x to get the same file path with fewer hacks  but in our case  where we need to pass it as an argument to dirname  that would have required the overhead of a starting a new subshell    cat apath test sh dirname  quot   print -P  x  quot            runs a command in a new process dirname  quot       - x  quot     source apath test sh apath apath  It turns out that the hacky way is both more performant and succinct

User · Answer

Keep it simple      usr bin env bash sourceDir  pwd  echo  sourceDir

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If your Bash script is a symlink  then this is the way to do it     usr bin env bash  dirn  quot   dirname  quot  0 quot   quot  rl  quot   readlink  quot  0 quot   quot   exec dir  quot   dirname   dirname  quot  rl quot    quot   my path  quot  dirn  exec dir quot   X  quot   cd   dirname   my path    amp  amp  pwd    basename   my path   quot   X is the directory that contains your Bash script  the original file  not the symlink   I swear to God this works  and it is the only way I know of doing this properly

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The below stores the script s directory path in the dir variable   It also tries to support being executed under Cygwin in Windows   And at last it runs the my-sample-app executable with all arguments passed to this script using  quot    quot      usr bin env sh  dir   cd  quot   0         quot   gt   dev null  amp  amp  pwd   if   -d  proc cygdrive    then     case  quot   uname -s  quot  in         CYGWIN  MINGW32  MSYS  MINGW                 We are under Windows  so translate path to Windows format              dir   cygpath -m  quot  dir quot                       esac fi    Runs the executable which is beside this script  quot   dir  my-sample-app quot   quot    quot

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I want to make sure that the script is running in its directory  So  cd   dirname   which  0      After this  if you really want to know where the you are running then run the command below   DIR    usr bin pwd

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Here s an excerpt from my answer to shell script  check directory name and convert to lowercase in which I demonstrate not only how to solve this problem with very basic POSIX-specified utilities  I also address how to very simply store the function s results in a returned variable       Well  as you can see  with some help  I hit upon a pretty simple and very powerful solution  I can pass the function a sort of messenger variable and dereference any explicit use of the resulting function s argument s  1 name with eval as necessary  and  upon the function routine s completion  I use eval and a backslashed quoting trick to assign my messenger variable the value I desire without ever having to know its name  In full disclosure       I found the messenger variable portion of this  and at Rich s sh tricks and I have also excerpted the relevant portion of his page below my own answer s excerpt      EXCERPT      Though not strictly POSIX yet  realpath is a GNU core application since 2012  Full disclosure  never heard of it before I noticed it in the info coreutils TOC and immediately thought of  the linked  question  but using the following function as demonstrated should reliably   soon POSIXLY    and  I hope  efficiently provide its caller with an absolutely sourced  0     abs 0      gt  o1  quot   1      quot     o1   quot   1  quot      o1   realpath -s  quot   1  quot     eval  quot  1    o1  quot    gt       abs 0   abs0   quot   0  quot     printf  s  n  quot   abs0  quot   no more dots in your path2 sh  It may be worth highlighting that this solution uses POSIX parameter expansion to first check if the path actually needs expanding and resolving at all before attempting to do so  This should return an absolutely sourced  0via a messenger variable  with the notable exception that it will preserve symlinks  as efficiently as I could imagine it could be done whether or not the path is already absolute       minor edit  before finding realpath in the docs  I had at least pared down my version of  the version below  not to depend on the time field  as it does in the first ps command   but  fair warning  after testing some I m less convinced ps is fully reliable in its command path expansion capacity  On the other hand  you could do this  ps ww -fp      grep -Eo          quot   0     quot   eval  quot abs0    ps ww -fp      grep -Eo          quot       And from Rich s sh tricks      Returning strings from a shell function As can be seen from the above pitfall of command substitution  standard output is not a good avenue for shell functions to return strings to their caller  unless the output is in a format where trailing newlines are insignificant  Certainly such practice is not acceptable for functions meant to deal with arbitrary strings  So  what can be done  Try this  func      body here eval  quot  1    foo  quot     Of course    foo  could be replaced by any sort of substitution  The key trick here is the eval line and the use of escaping  The     1    is expanded when the argument to eval is constructed by the main command parser  But the      foo     is not expanded at this stage  because the         has been quoted  Instead  it   s expanded when eval evaluates its argument  If it   s not clear why this is important  consider how the following would be bad  foo  hello   rm -rf    dest bar eval  quot  dest  foo quot   But of course the following version is perfectly safe  foo  hello   rm -rf    dest bar eval  quot  dest   foo quot   Note that in the original example      1    was used to allow the caller to pass the destination variable name as an argument the function  If your function needs to use the shift command  for instance to handle the remaining arguments as           then it may be useful to save the value of     1    in a temporary variable at the beginning of the function

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is worth mentioning as an alternative to  0   If you re running a script from Bash  the accepted answer can be shortened to   DIR     dirname           Note that this has to be the first statement in your script

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This is how I work it on my scripts  pathvar     cd     dirname  0     amp  amp  pwd    This will tell you which directory the Launcher  current script  is being executed from

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You can use  BASH SOURCE      bin bash  scriptdir  dirname   BASH SOURCE     Note that you need to use    bin bash and not    bin sh since it s a Bash extension

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I ve compared many of the answers given  and came up with some more compact solutions  These seem to handle all of the crazy edge cases that arise from your favorite combination of   Absolute paths or relative paths File and directory soft links Invocation as script  bash script  bash -c script  source script  or   script Spaces  tabs  newlines  Unicode  etc  in directories and or filename Filenames beginning with a hyphen  If you re running from Linux  it seems that using the proc handle is the best solution to locate the fully resolved source of the currently running script  in an interactive session  the link points to the respective  dev pts X   resolved  quot   readlink  proc    fd 255  amp  amp  echo X  quot   amp  amp  resolved  quot   resolved    nX   quot   This has a small bit of ugliness to it  but the fix is compact and easy to understand  We aren t using bash primitives only  but I m okay with that because readlink simplifies the task considerably  The echo X adds an X to the end of the variable string so that any trailing whitespace in the filename doesn t get eaten  and the parameter substitution   VAR X  at the end of the line gets rid of the X  Because readlink adds a newline of its own  which would normally be eaten in the command substitution if not for our previous trickery   we have to get rid of that  too  This is most easily accomplished using the     quoting scheme  which lets us use escape sequences such as  n to represent newlines  this is also how you can easily make deviously named directories and files   The above should cover your needs for locating the currently running script on Linux  but if you don t have the proc filesystem at your disposal  or if you re trying to locate the fully resolved path of some other file  then maybe you ll find the below code helpful  It s only a slight modification from the above one-liner  If you re playing around with strange directory filenames  checking the output with both ls and readlink is informative  as ls will output  quot simplified quot  paths  substituting   for things like newlines  absolute path   readlink -e --  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot   amp  amp  echo x   amp  amp  absolute path   absolute path  x  dir   dirname --  quot  absolute path quot   amp  amp  echo x   amp  amp  dir   dir  x  file   basename --  quot  absolute path quot   amp  amp  echo x   amp  amp  file   file  x   ls -l --  quot  dir  file quot  printf   absolute path   quot  s quot  n   quot  absolute path quot

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I tried the followings with 3 different executions  echo   realpath       application            correct path to dir or  path to temporary dir bash application         path to bash  PATH TO application     correct path to dir  echo   realpath   dirname  0     application           failed with  realpath  missing operand  bash application         correct path to dir  PATH TO application     correct path to dir  echo   realpath  BASH SOURCE   BASH SOURCE is basically the same with   BASH SOURCE 0      application            correct path to dir bash application         correct path to dir  PATH TO application     correct path to dir  Only   realpath  BASH SOURCE  seems to be reliable

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This is the only way I ve found to tell reliably   SCRIPT DIR   dirname   cd    dirname   BASH SOURCE     pwd

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Based on this answer  I suggest the clarified version that gets SCRIPT HOME as the containing folder of any currently-running Bash script  s   BASH SOURCE 0     s  dirname  s    SCRIPT HOME  cd  s   pwd  echo  SCRIPT HOME

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I think the simplest answer is a parameter expansion of the original variable     usr bin env bash  DIR  quot    cd  quot    dirname  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot    quot   gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp  pwd   quot  echo  quot opt1  original answer   DIR quot  echo     echo  quot opt2  simple answer      BASH SOURCE 0      quot   It should produce output like     var tmp test sh opt1  original answer   var tmp  opt2  simple answer     var tmp  The variable parameter expansion   BASH SOURCE 0      quot  seems much easier to maintain

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Use dirname  quot  0 quot      bin bash echo  quot The script you are running has basename  basename  quot  0 quot    dirname  dirname  quot  0 quot   quot  echo  quot The present working directory is  pwd  quot   Using pwd alone will not work if you are not running the script from the directory it is contained in   matt server1     pwd  home matt  matt server1       test2 sh The script you are running has basename test2 sh  dirname   The present working directory is  home matt  matt server1     cd  tmp  matt server1 tmp     test2 sh The script you are running has basename test2 sh  dirname  home matt The present working directory is  tmp

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This works in Bash 3 2  path  quot    dirname  quot    which  quot  0 quot    quot    quot   If you have a   bin directory in your  PATH  you have  A inside this directory  It sources the script   bin lib B  You know where the included script is relative to the original one  in the lib subdirectory  but not where it is relative to the user s current directory  This is solved by the following  inside A   source  quot    dirname  quot    which  quot  0 quot    quot    lib B quot   It doesn t matter where the user is or how he she calls the script  This will always work

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You can do that just combining the script name   0  with realpath and or dirname  It works for Bash and Shell     usr bin env bash  RELATIVE PATH  quot   0  quot  RELATIVE DIR PATH  quot   dirname  quot   0  quot   quot  FULL DIR PATH  quot   realpath  quot   0  quot    xargs dirname  quot  FULL PATH  quot   realpath  quot   0  quot   quot   echo  quot RELATIVE PATH- gt   RELATIVE PATH  lt - quot  echo  quot RELATIVE DIR PATH- gt   RELATIVE DIR PATH  lt - quot  echo  quot FULL DIR PATH- gt   FULL DIR PATH  lt - quot  echo  quot FULL PATH- gt   FULL PATH  lt - quot   The output will be something like this    RELATIVE PATH- gt   bin startup sh lt -   RELATIVE DIR PATH- gt   bin lt -   FULL DIR PATH- gt  opt my app bin lt -   FULL PATH- gt  opt my app bin startup sh lt -    0 is the name of the script itself  4 4  Special Variable Types An example  LozanoMatheus get script paths sh

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The shortest and most elegant way to do this is      bin bash DIRECTORY   cd  dirname  0   amp  amp  pwd  echo  DIRECTORY   This would work on all platforms and is super clean   More details can be found in  Which directory is that bash script in

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One advantage of this method is that it doesn t involve anything outside Bash itself and does not fork any subshell neither  First  use pattern substitution to replace anything not starting with    i e   a relative path  with  PWD   Since we use a substitution to match the first character of  0  we also have to append it back    0 0 1  in the substitution   Now we have a full path to the script  we can get the directory by removing the last   and anything the follows  i e   the script name   That directory can then be used in cd or as a prefix to other paths relative to your script     bin bash  BIN   0         quot  PWD   0 0 1  quot   DIR   BIN      cd  quot  DIR quot   If your script may be sourced rather than executed  you can of course replace  0 with   BASH SOURCE 0    such as  BIN   BASH SOURCE 0          quot  PWD   BASH SOURCE 0  0 1  quot    This will work for executable scripts too  It s longer  but more polyvalent

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Here is an easy-to-remember script  DIR  quot   dirname  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot   quot     Get the directory name DIR  quot   realpath  quot   DIR  quot   quot       Resolve its full path if need be

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The dirname command is the most basic  simply parsing the path up to the filename off of the  0  script name  variable  dirname  quot  0 quot   But  as matt b pointed out  the path returned is different depending on how the script is called  pwd doesn t do the job because that only tells you what the current directory is  not what directory the script resides in  Additionally  if a symbolic link to a script is executed  you re going to get a  probably relative  path to where the link resides  not the actual script  Some others have mentioned the readlink command  but at its simplest  you can use  dirname  quot   readlink -f  quot  0 quot   quot   readlink will resolve the script path to an absolute path from the root of the filesystem  So  any paths containing single or double dots  tildes and or symbolic links will be resolved to a full path  Here s a script demonstrating each of these  whatdir sh     bin bash echo  quot pwd   pwd  quot  echo  quot   0   0 quot  echo  quot basename   basename  0  quot  echo  quot dirname   dirname  0  quot  echo  quot dirname readlink    dirname   readlink -f  0   quot   Running this script in my home dir  using a relative path   gt  gt  gt     whatdir sh pwd   Users phatblat  0    whatdir sh basename  whatdir sh dirname    dirname readlink   Users phatblat  Again  but using the full path to the script   gt  gt  gt    Users phatblat whatdir sh pwd   Users phatblat  0   Users phatblat whatdir sh basename  whatdir sh dirname   Users phatblat dirname readlink   Users phatblat  Now changing directories   gt  gt  gt   cd  tmp  gt  gt  gt     whatdir sh pwd   tmp  0   Users phatblat whatdir sh basename  whatdir sh dirname   Users phatblat dirname readlink   Users phatblat  And finally using a symbolic link to execute the script   gt  gt  gt   ln -s   whatdir sh whatdirlink sh  gt  gt  gt     whatdirlink sh pwd   tmp  0    whatdirlink sh basename  whatdirlink sh dirname    dirname readlink   Users phatblat

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This one-liner works on Cygwin even if the script has been called from Windows with bash -c  lt script gt   set mydir  quot   cygpath  quot   dirname  quot  0 quot   quot   quot

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0 is not a reliable way to get the current script path  For example  this is my  xprofile     bin bash echo  quot  0  1  2 quot  echo  quot   BASH SOURCE 0   quot     dir my script sh  amp    cd  tmp  amp  amp     xprofile  amp  amp  source    xprofile   home puchuu  xprofile  home puchuu  xprofile -bash  home puchuu  xprofile  So please use BASH SOURCE instead

[bash] How can I get the source directory of a Bash script from within the script itself?

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