Question

I am iterating through a folder of files using bash, but I need to cut the preceding path. For instance if I have this ‘/temp/test/filename’ I want to cut off the ‘/temp/test/’ and store the file name to a variable so I can write a log with the filename in it.

Can anyone help me out? The problem is that the variable temp is always empty.

Here is my bash code:

#!/bin/bash

for file in /temp/test/*
do
    if [[ ! -f "$file" ]]
    then
        continue
    fi

    temp="$file"|cut -d'/' -f3

    $file > /var/log/$temp$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).log
done

exit

Answer 1

Try that :

$ x=/temp/test/filename
$ echo ${x##*/}
filename

Another solution is to use basename :

$ basename /temp/test/filename
filename

The first solution is a parameter expansion and it’s a bash builtin, so we increase performance.

Your line temp="$file"|cut -d'/' -f3 is broken.

• when you want to store the output of a command in a variable, you should do var=$(command)
• you need to pass the value to the STDIN of the command with a here-string (<<<) or with echo value | command

finally, if you’d want to use cut :

$ temp=$(cut -d/ -f4 <<< /temp/test/filename)
$ echo $temp
filename