[vox-tech] Identifying the directory that contains the currently running executable?

[Ken Bloom]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 11:04:42AM -0700, Matt Roper wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 10:28:27AM -0700, Ken Bloom wrote:
> ...
> > Is there a way to identify the directory that contains the currently
> > running script in bash? i.e. if I'm running /home/bloom/bin/foo in
> > /bin/bash, and pwd is /home/bloom, how can I programmatically get
> > either /home/bloom/bin/foo or /home/bloom/bin to refer to it?
> > (This would be particularly nice when using calling `java -classpath`
> > from a shell script wrapper)
> 
> $0 has already been suggested, but looking at the bash reference manual,
> it sounds like $_ might also be useful:
> 
>     (An underscore.) At shell startup, set to the absolute filename of
>     the shell or shell script being executed as passed in the argument
>     list. Subsequently, expands to the last argument to the previous
>     command, after expansion. Also set to the full pathname of each
>     command executed and placed in the environment exported to that
>     command. When checking mail, this parameter holds the name of the
>     mail file.

Doesn't seem to do it.

#!/bin/bash
#next line must be first line
SCRIPTPATH=$_
echo $SCRIPTPATH
echo $(dirname $SCRIPTPATH)

[bloom at kabloom ~]$ bash test/test2
bash
.
[bloom at kabloom ~]$ test/test2
/bin/bash
/bin

> I haven't actually tried that, but it sounds like you'd need to capture
> it as the first command of your shell script.
> 
> > Are there ways to do this in other scripting languages (e.g. perl)?
> 
> This should work in Perl:
> 
>     #!/usr/bin/perl
>     use FindBin;
> 
>     print $FindBin::Bin, "\n";

That works perfectly.

Maybe I'll just rewrite scripts that need that in Perl.

--Ken Bloom
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