Question

I have a directory structure of package/bin and package/lib, where package/lib contains jar files and package/bin should contain some scripts.

I am interested in writing scripts in package/bin that basically run java classes from lib/. These scripts should be runnable from any directory, not necessarily package/, package/bin/ or package/lib.

This means that the script in package/bin, let’s call it ‘run.sh’ should do something like:

1. identify the directory from which run.sh script is running.
2. strip off the directory so that we end up with package/
3. add bin/ to it
4. run the necessary java classes with this deduced directory.

What would be the best way to follow steps 1-3? I would like it to be almost platform-independent, so that at the very least it would work on all Unix systems and OSX. I want to avoid using perl (I could easily write this in perl), and instead opt for a shell script.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Along the BASH lines….

my_package_path=$(dirname `dirname $0` )

$0 gives you the path to the script you are running
dirname $0 gives you the path to the folder your script is in