Unix shell script find out which directory the script file resides?

Question

Basically I need to run the script with paths related to the shell script file location, how can I change the current directory to the same directory as where the script file resides?

Answer 1

In Bash, you should get what you need like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash  BASEDIR=$(dirname "$0") echo "$BASEDIR" 

Answer 2

The original post contains the solution (ignore the responses, they don't add anything useful). The interesting work is done by the mentioned unix command readlink with option -f. Works when the script is called by an absolute as well as by a relative path.

For bash, sh, ksh:

#!/bin/bash  # Absolute path to this script, e.g. /home/user/bin/foo.sh SCRIPT=$(readlink -f "$0") # Absolute path this script is in, thus /home/user/bin SCRIPTPATH=$(dirname "$SCRIPT") echo $SCRIPTPATH 

For tcsh, csh:

#!/bin/tcsh # Absolute path to this script, e.g. /home/user/bin/foo.csh set SCRIPT=`readlink -f "$0"` # Absolute path this script is in, thus /home/user/bin set SCRIPTPATH=`dirname "$SCRIPT"` echo $SCRIPTPATH 

See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/246128/59087