BASENAME(1) General Commands Manual BASENAME(1)

basename — return filename portion of pathname

basename string [suffix]

basename deletes any prefix ending with the last slash (‘/’) character present in string, and a suffix, if given. The resulting filename is written to the standard output. A non-existent suffix is ignored.

The basename utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

The following line sets the shell variable FOO to tail:

FOO=`basename /usr/bin/tail`

csh(1), dirname(1), sh(1), basename(3)

The basename utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

OpenBSD 7.8 July 30, 2024 BASENAME(1)