Intro To 'basename' Command In Linux

2023-05-17 - By Robert Elder

I use the 'basename' command to remove leading path components from a file or directory name. For example, when I run the 'basename' command on this file path:

basename /home/robert/important/cat.png

it will print only the file name with the directory part stripped away:

cat.png

The 'basename' command is commonly used together with the 'dirname' command as a method of parsing file paths in a shell script. Here, I have an script example script that's used to resize images:

#!/bin/bash

IMAGE_PATH=${1}

IMAGE_FILENAME=$(basename "${IMAGE_PATH}")
IMAGE_DIRNAME=$(dirname "${IMAGE_PATH}")
NEW_IMAGE_PATH="${IMAGE_DIRNAME}/resized-${IMAGE_FILENAME}"

echo "Resizing image at '${IMAGE_PATH}' to '${NEW_IMAGE_PATH}'."

convert -resize 50% "${IMAGE_PATH}" "${NEW_IMAGE_PATH}"

This script takes a single argument that's expected to be any relative or absolute path to an image file that will be resized. This script first uses the 'basename' command to isolate the name of the image file so that a prefix can be added to the resized image. The resized image file is then stored alongside the original.

Let's try running this script with a few different paths:

./do-resize.sh /home/robert/important/foo/dog.png

Resizing image at '/home/robert/important/foo/dog.png' to '/home/robert/important/foo/resized-dog.png'.

./do-resize.sh /home/robert/important/cat.png

Resizing image at '/home/robert/important/cat.png' to '/home/robert/important/resized-cat.png'.

./do-resize.sh ./cat.png

Resizing image at './cat.png' to './resized-cat.png'.

./do-resize.sh ./foo/dog.png

Resizing image at './foo/dog.png' to './foo/resized-dog.png'.

Here, you can see the original and resulting resized images:

find . -name '*.png' -exec ls -l {} \;

-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 2619564 May 14 13:53 ./resized-cat.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 9418937 May  6 14:18 ./foo/dog.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 2619564 May 14 13:53 ./foo/resized-dog.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 9418937 May  6 14:18 ./cat.png

The 'basename' command is the most based command in the entire Linux operating system.

And that's why the 'basename' command is my favourite Linux command.

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