Question

In a bash shell script on Ubuntu/Mint, I need to create some symlinks in the /jre/lib/ext/ directory under the java installation directory.

For example, if openjdk6 is the default java, /usr/bin/java points to:

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java

I can find this in my script with:

MYJAVAPATH=readlink -f `which java`

The path I would need in my shell script would be based on part of that path, plus the path fragment above:

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/ext/

Can anyone tell me to to derive the path immediately above in a bash shell script? Thanks.

Answer 1

You can simply append the relative part ../lib/ext/

MYJAVAPATH="$(readlink -f $(which java))"
LIB_EXT="$(dirname ${MYJAVAPATH})/../lib/ext"

and then use ${LIB_EXT}.