Getting the parent of a directory in Bash

Question

If I have a file path such as...

/home/smith/Desktop/Test
/home/smith/Desktop/Test/

How do I change the string so it will be the parent dir

Answer 1

if for whatever reason you are interested in navigating up a specific number of directories you could also do: nth_path=$(cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && cd ../../../ && pwd). This would give 3 parents directories up

Answer 2

...but what is "seen here" is broken. Here's the fix:

> pwd
/home/me
> x='Om Namah Shivaya'
> mkdir "$x" && cd "$x"
/home/me/Om Namah Shivaya
> parentdir="$(dirname "$(pwd)")"
> echo $parentdir
/home/me

Answer 3

This would go up to the parent folder

cd ../

Answer 4

use this : export MYVAR="$(dirname "$(dirname "$(dirname "$(dirname $PWD)")")")" if you want 4th parent directory

export MYVAR="$(dirname "$(dirname "$(dirname $PWD)")")" if you want 3rd parent directory

export MYVAR="$(dirname "$(dirname $PWD)")" if you want 2nd parent directory

Answer 5

dir=/home/smith/Desktop/Test
parentdir="$(dirname "$dir")"

Works if there is a trailing slash, too.

Answer 6

Just use echo $(cd ../ && pwd) while working in the directory whose parent dir you want to find out. This chain also has the added benefit of not having trailing slashes.