How to get full path of a file?

Question

Is there an easy way I can print the full path of file.txt ?

file.txt = /nfs/an/disks/jj/home/dir/file.txt

The

Answer 1

echo $(cd $(dirname "$1") && pwd -P)/$(basename "$1")

This is explanation of what is going on at @ZeRemz's answer:

1. This script get relative path as argument "$1"
2. Then we get dirname part of that path (you can pass either dir or file to this script): dirname "$1"
3. Then we cd "$(dirname "$1") into this relative dir
4. && pwd -P and get absolute path for it. -P option will avoid all symlinks
5. After that we append basename to absolute path: $(basename "$1")
6. As final step we echo it

Answer 2

fp () {
PHYS_DIR=`pwd -P`
RESULT=$PHYS_DIR/$1
echo $RESULT | pbcopy
echo $RESULT
}

Copies the text to your clipboard and displays the text on the terminal window.

:)

(I copied some of the code from another stack overflow answer but cannot find that answer anymore)

Answer 3

Another Linux utility, that does this job:

fname <file>

Answer 4

I suppose you are using Linux.

I found a utility called realpath in coreutils 8.15.

realpath file.txt
/data/ail_data/transformed_binaries/coreutils/test_folder_realpath/file.txt

As per @styrofoam-fly and @arch-standton comments, realpath alone doesn't check for file existence, to solve this add the e argument: realpath -e file

Answer 5

This is naive, but I had to make it to be POSIX compliant. Requires permission to cd into the file's directory.

#!/bin/sh
if [ ${#} = 0 ]; then
  echo "Error: 0 args. need 1" >&2
  exit 1
fi


if [ -d ${1} ]; then


  # Directory


  base=$( cd ${1}; echo ${PWD##*/} )
  dir=$( cd ${1}; echo ${PWD%${base}} )

  if [ ${dir} = / ]; then
    parentPath=${dir}
  else
    parentPath=${dir%/}
  fi

  if [ -z ${base} ] || [ -z ${parentPath} ]; then
    if [ -n ${1} ]; then
      fullPath=$( cd ${1}; echo ${PWD} )
    else
      echo "Error: unsupported scenario 1" >&2
      exit 1
    fi
  fi

elif [ ${1%/*} = ${1} ]; then

  if [ -f ./${1} ]; then


    # File in current directory

    base=$( echo ${1##*/} )
    parentPath=$( echo ${PWD} )

  else
    echo "Error: unsupported scenario 2" >&2
    exit 1
  fi
elif [ -f ${1} ] && [ -d ${1%/*} ]; then


  # File in directory

  base=$( echo ${1##*/} )
  parentPath=$( cd ${1%/*}; echo ${PWD} )

else
  echo "Error: not file or directory" >&2
  exit 1
fi

if [ ${parentPath} = / ]; then
  fullPath=${fullPath:-${parentPath}${base}}
fi

fullPath=${fullPath:-${parentPath}/${base}}

if [ ! -e ${fullPath} ]; then
  echo "Error: does not exist" >&2
  exit 1
fi

echo ${fullPath}

Answer 6

I like many of the answers already given, but I have found this really useful, especially within a script to get the full path of a file, including following symlinks and relative references such as . and ..

dirname `readlink -e relative/path/to/file`

Which will return the full path of the file from the root path onwards. This can be used in a script so that the script knows which path it is running from, which is useful in a repository clone which could be located anywhere on a machine.

basePath=`dirname \`readlink -e $0\``

I can then use the ${basePath} variable in my scripts to directly reference other scripts.

Hope this helps,

Dave