DIRNAME(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 27 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 DIRNAME(1) — like, the user commands manual, bestie ✨

okay so this is dirname, section 1 of the manual (user commands, the fun section), and honestly? she's a tiny little legend and you're gonna love her 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

dirname — strip the last component off a file name. that's it. that's the whole job. iconic behavior 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dirname [OPTION] NAME...

yes bestie, you can throw multiple NAMEs at her at once. she can handle it 💅

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So here's the tea: dirname takes each NAME you hand her and prints it back to you with the last non-slash component gone, and any trailing slashes gone too. bye bye last bit 👋

And if a NAME has, like, literally zero / characters in it? Then she prints . — which means the current directory, iykyk 🦋

  • -z, --zero — ends every output line with a NUL character instead of a newline. not me being obsessed with NUL-separated output for scripting 😭✨
  • --help — shows you the help text and dips out. display this help and exit, fr fr
  • --version — spits out the version info and exits. output version information and exit 👑

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

the receipts, as requested:

dirname /usr/bin/          -> "/usr"
dirname dir1/str dir2/str  -> "dir1" followed by "dir2"
dirname stdio.h            -> "."

see how dirname stdio.h just gives you .? no slashes, no last-component-to-strip, so she says "current directory, babe" 💀 adorable. and yes, dirname dir1/str dir2/str gives you two lines of output — "dir1" followed by "dir2" 🎀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering. legends. we stan. 💜

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

found a bug? don't suffer in silence bestie, tell the people:

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. ⚠️ like, none. zero. nada. don't come for her if something breaks, she warned you fr 💀

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/dirname> — or available locally via: info '(coreutils) dirname invocation' 📖✨

and that's the whole vibe check, bestie — this page is from GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, and it ate, no cap 💅🌸🫶

📦 where this page comes from