Extract filename and extension in Bash

Question

I want to get the filename (without extension) and the extension separately.

The best solution I found so far is:

NAME=`echo \"$FILE\" | cut -d\'.\'          


        

Answer 1

No need to bother with awk or sed or even perl for this simple task. There is a pure-Bash, os.path.splitext()-compatible solution which only uses parameter expansions.

Reference Implementation

Documentation of os.path.splitext(path):

Split the pathname path into a pair (root, ext) such that root + ext == path, and ext is empty or begins with a period and contains at most one period. Leading periods on the basename are ignored; splitext('.cshrc') returns ('.cshrc', '').

Python code:

root, ext = os.path.splitext(path)

Bash Implementation

Honoring leading periods

root="${path%.*}"
ext="${path#"$root"}"

Ignoring leading periods

root="${path#.}";root="${path%"$root"}${root%.*}"
ext="${path#"$root"}"

Tests

Here are test cases for the Ignoring leading periods implementation, which should match the Python reference implementation on every input.

|---------------|-----------|-------|
|path           |root       |ext    |
|---------------|-----------|-------|
|' .txt'        |' '        |'.txt' |
|' .txt.txt'    |' .txt'    |'.txt' |
|' txt'         |' txt'     |''     |
|'*.txt.txt'    |'*.txt'    |'.txt' |
|'.cshrc'       |'.cshrc'   |''     |
|'.txt'         |'.txt'     |''     |
|'?.txt.txt'    |'?.txt'    |'.txt' |
|'\n.txt.txt'   |'\n.txt'   |'.txt' |
|'\t.txt.txt'   |'\t.txt'   |'.txt' |
|'a b.txt.txt'  |'a b.txt'  |'.txt' |
|'a*b.txt.txt'  |'a*b.txt'  |'.txt' |
|'a?b.txt.txt'  |'a?b.txt'  |'.txt' |
|'a\nb.txt.txt' |'a\nb.txt' |'.txt' |
|'a\tb.txt.txt' |'a\tb.txt' |'.txt' |
|'txt'          |'txt'      |''     |
|'txt.pdf'      |'txt'      |'.pdf' |
|'txt.tar.gz'   |'txt.tar'  |'.gz'  |
|'txt.txt'      |'txt'      |'.txt' |
|---------------|-----------|-------|

Test Results

All tests passed.