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Finding a directory is very easy through Bash scripting. But finding the exact directory folder name you are in right now is a bit complicated.

This article will introduce three methods to find the folder name from this article directory. In addition, we will see the necessary examples and explanations to make the topic easier to understand.

Find the current folder name in Bash

To do this, we will use a special keyword: PWD. This built-in keyword in Bash is used to find the current working directory.

In the following example, we will find the name of the folder we are currently in. The code for our example is shown below.

current_dir=${PWD##*/}
echo "$current_dir"

The above is the simplest way to accomplish the task. But our next example is a little more complicated.

We will use the example below to find the folder name.

Current_Dir=${PWD##*/}
Current_Dir=${Current_Dir:-/}
printf '%s\n' "${PWD##*/}"
printf '%q\n' "${PWD##*/}"

In the example above, we Current_Dir=${PWD##*/}assign a variable using the line, and with Current_Dir=${Current_Dir:-/}the line we correct PWD=/the case of .

After that, you can use any of the next two lines. Both lines will be printed to standard output.

But the first line is more robust than echo for some unusual names, where the second line is quoted for use as shell input, and it's also useful for making hidden characters readable. After running the above script, you'll only get the folder names of the current directory.

We can also perform a similar task with the following example. Here, we put the entire directory in a variable.

The code for our next example is shown below.

DirectoryStr=/path/to/somewhere//
shopt -s extglob
CurrentDir=${DirectoryStr%%+(/)}
CurrentDir=${CurrentDir##*/}
CurrentDir=${CurrentDir:-/}
printf '%s\n' "$CurrentDir"

Let's explain this example piece by piece.

1. In the first line, we create a variable and assign the directory path to it as a string.
2. Then, with the shopt -s extglob line, we enabled the +(...) glob syntax.
3. With CurrentDir=${DirectoryStr%%+(/)}this line, we trim the string regardless of how many trailing slashes are present in the string.
4. With CurrentDir=${CurrentDir##*/}this line, we delete everything before the last /.
5. We have just CurrentDir=${CurrentDir:-/}corrected the directory case with the line
6. Finally, we just printed the directory folder.

All the codes used in this article are written in Bash. It will only work in Linux Shell environment.