The basename command extracts the filename from a path.

How to use the basename command

The basename command takes a single argument, which is the path to the file or directory whose filename you want to extract. It returns the filename, minus the directory path.

For example, to extract the filename from the following path:

/home/user/myfile.txt

You would type the following command:

basename /home/user/myfile.txt

The output of the command would be:

myfile.txt

basename command options

-s suffix: Removes the specified suffix from the filename. For example, to remove the .txt suffix from the filename myfile.txt, you would type the following command:

basename myfile.txt -s .txt

The output of the command would be:

myfile

-a: Removes all suffixes from the filename. For example, to remove all suffixes from the filename myfile.txt.gz, you would type the following command:

basename myfile.txt.gz -a

The output of the command would be:

myfile

basename command examples

Here are some examples of how to use the basename command: To extract the filename from a URL:

basename https://example.com/myfile.txt

Output: myfile.txt

To remove the directory path from a filename:

basename /home/user/myfile.txt

Output:

myfile.txt

To generate a filename for a temporary file:

tempfile=$(basename $(mktemp).tmp)

The variable tempfile will now contain the filename of a temporary file in the current directory.

With gencmd

gencmd given a path like this /dir1/dir2/filename.txt, extract only filename

• basename /dir1/dir2/filename.txt

gencmd given path /dir1/dir2/filename.txt.gz, extract only filename without extensions

• basename /dir1/dir2/filename.txt.gz
• basename -s .gz /dir1/dir2/filename.txt.gz
• basename /dir1/dir2/filename.txt.gz | cut -d ‘.’ -f 1
• basename /dir1/dir2/filename.txt.gz | cut -d. -f1

Conclusion

basename extracts filenames from paths. It is useful for a variety of tasks, such as parsing URLs, removing directory paths from filenames, and generating filenames for temporary files.