BASH: Convert absolute path into relative path given a current directory

Question

absolute="/foo/bar"
current="/foo/baz/foo"

# magic

relative="../../bar"

Can you help me with magic? (Hopefully not too complicated code...)

Answer 1

Sadly, Mark Rushakoff's answer (now deleted - it referenced the code from here) does not seem to work correctly when adapted to:

source=/home/part2/part3/part4
target=/work/proj1/proj2

The thinking outlined in the commentary can be refined to make it work correctly for most cases. I'm about to assume that the script takes a source argument (where you are) and a target argument (where you want to get to), and that either both are absolute pathnames or both are relative. If one is absolute and the other relative, the easiest thing is to prefix the relative name with the current working directory - but the code below does not do that.

---

Beware

The code below is close to working correctly, but is not quite right.

1. There is the problem addressed in the comments from Dennis Williamson.
2. There is also a problem that this purely textual processing of pathnames and you can be seriously messed up by weird symlinks.
3. The code does not handle stray 'dots' in paths like 'xyz/./pqr'.
4. The code does not handle stray 'double dots' in paths like 'xyz/../pqr'.
5. Trivially: the code does not remove leading './' from paths.

Dennis's code is better because it fixes 1 and 5 - but has the same issues 2, 3, 4. Use Dennis's code (and up-vote it ahead of this) because of that.

(NB: POSIX provides a system call realpath() that resolves pathnames so that there are no symlinks left in them. Applying that to the input names, and then using Dennis's code would give the correct answer each time. It is trivial to write the C code that wraps realpath() - I've done it - but I don't know of a standard utility that does so.)

---

For this, I find Perl easier to use than shell, though bash has decent support for arrays and could probably do this too - exercise for the reader. So, given two compatible names, split them each into components:

• Set the relative path to empty.
• While the components are the same, skip to the next.
• When corresponding components are different or there are no more components for one path:
• If there are no remaining source components and the relative path is empty, add "." to the start.
• For each remaining source component, prefix the relative path with "../".
• If there are no remaining target components and the relative path is empty, add "." to the start.
• For each remaining target component, add the component to the end of the path after a slash.

Thus:

#!/bin/perl -w

use strict;

# Should fettle the arguments if one is absolute and one relative:
# Oops - missing functionality!

# Split!
my(@source) = split '/', $ARGV[0];
my(@target) = split '/', $ARGV[1];

my $count = scalar(@source);
   $count = scalar(@target) if (scalar(@target) < $count);
my $relpath = "";

my $i;
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++)
{
    last if $source[$i] ne $target[$i];
}

$relpath = "." if ($i >= scalar(@source) && $relpath eq "");
for (my $s = $i; $s < scalar(@source); $s++)
{
    $relpath = "../$relpath";
}
$relpath = "." if ($i >= scalar(@target) && $relpath eq "");
for (my $t = $i; $t < scalar(@target); $t++)
{
    $relpath .= "/$target[$t]";
}

# Clean up result (remove double slash, trailing slash, trailing slash-dot).
$relpath =~ s%//%/%;
$relpath =~ s%/$%%;
$relpath =~ s%/\.$%%;

print "source  = $ARGV[0]\n";
print "target  = $ARGV[1]\n";
print "relpath = $relpath\n";

Test script (the square brackets contain a blank and a tab):

sed 's/#.*//;/^[    ]*$/d' <<! |

/home/part1/part2 /home/part1/part3
/home/part1/part2 /home/part4/part5
/home/part1/part2 /work/part6/part7
/home/part1       /work/part1/part2/part3/part4
/home             /work/part2/part3
/                 /work/part2/part3/part4

/home/part1/part2 /home/part1/part2/part3/part4
/home/part1/part2 /home/part1/part2/part3
/home/part1/part2 /home/part1/part2
/home/part1/part2 /home/part1
/home/part1/part2 /home
/home/part1/part2 /

/home/part1/part2 /work
/home/part1/part2 /work/part1
/home/part1/part2 /work/part1/part2
/home/part1/part2 /work/part1/part2/part3
/home/part1/part2 /work/part1/part2/part3/part4

home/part1/part2 home/part1/part3
home/part1/part2 home/part4/part5
home/part1/part2 work/part6/part7
home/part1       work/part1/part2/part3/part4
home             work/part2/part3
.                work/part2/part3

home/part1/part2 home/part1/part2/part3/part4
home/part1/part2 home/part1/part2/part3
home/part1/part2 home/part1/part2
home/part1/part2 home/part1
home/part1/part2 home
home/part1/part2 .

home/part1/part2 work
home/part1/part2 work/part1
home/part1/part2 work/part1/part2
home/part1/part2 work/part1/part2/part3
home/part1/part2 work/part1/part2/part3/part4

!

while read source target
do
    perl relpath.pl $source $target
    echo
done

Output from the test script:

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home/part1/part3
relpath = ../part3

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home/part4/part5
relpath = ../../part4/part5

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /work/part6/part7
relpath = ../../../work/part6/part7

source  = /home/part1
target  = /work/part1/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ../../work/part1/part2/part3/part4

source  = /home
target  = /work/part2/part3
relpath = ../work/part2/part3

source  = /
target  = /work/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ./work/part2/part3/part4

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home/part1/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ./part3/part4

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home/part1/part2/part3
relpath = ./part3

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home/part1/part2
relpath = .

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home/part1
relpath = ..

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /home
relpath = ../..

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /
relpath = ../../../..

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /work
relpath = ../../../work

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /work/part1
relpath = ../../../work/part1

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /work/part1/part2
relpath = ../../../work/part1/part2

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /work/part1/part2/part3
relpath = ../../../work/part1/part2/part3

source  = /home/part1/part2
target  = /work/part1/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ../../../work/part1/part2/part3/part4

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home/part1/part3
relpath = ../part3

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home/part4/part5
relpath = ../../part4/part5

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = work/part6/part7
relpath = ../../../work/part6/part7

source  = home/part1
target  = work/part1/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ../../work/part1/part2/part3/part4

source  = home
target  = work/part2/part3
relpath = ../work/part2/part3

source  = .
target  = work/part2/part3
relpath = ../work/part2/part3

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home/part1/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ./part3/part4

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home/part1/part2/part3
relpath = ./part3

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home/part1/part2
relpath = .

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home/part1
relpath = ..

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = home
relpath = ../..

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = .
relpath = ../../..

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = work
relpath = ../../../work

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = work/part1
relpath = ../../../work/part1

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = work/part1/part2
relpath = ../../../work/part1/part2

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = work/part1/part2/part3
relpath = ../../../work/part1/part2/part3

source  = home/part1/part2
target  = work/part1/part2/part3/part4
relpath = ../../../work/part1/part2/part3/part4

---

This Perl script works fairly thoroughly on Unix (it does not take into account all the complexities of Windows path names) in the face of weird inputs. It uses the module Cwd and its function realpath to resolve the real path of names that exist, and does a textual analysis for paths that don't exist. In all cases except one, it produces the same output as Dennis's script. The deviant case is:

source   = home/part1/part2
target   = .
relpath1 = ../../..
relpath2 = ../../../.

The two results are equivalent - just not identical. (The output is from a mildly modified version of the test script - the Perl script below simply prints the answer, rather than the inputs and the answer as in the script above.) Now: should I eliminate the non-working answer? Maybe...

#!/bin/perl -w
# Based loosely on code from: http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.shell/2005-10/1256.html
# Via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2564634

use strict;

die "Usage: $0 from to\n" if scalar @ARGV != 2;

use Cwd qw(realpath getcwd);

my $pwd;
my $verbose = 0;

# Fettle filename so it is absolute.
# Deals with '//', '/./' and '/../' notations, plus symlinks.
# The realpath() function does the hard work if the path exists.
# For non-existent paths, the code does a purely textual hack.
sub resolve
{
    my($name) = @_;
    my($path) = realpath($name);
    if (!defined $path)
    {
        # Path does not exist - do the best we can with lexical analysis
        # Assume Unix - not dealing with Windows.
        $path = $name;
        if ($name !~ m%^/%)
        {
            $pwd = getcwd if !defined $pwd;
            $path = "$pwd/$path";
        }
        $path =~ s%//+%/%g;     # Not UNC paths.
        $path =~ s%/$%%;        # No trailing /
        $path =~ s%/\./%/%g;    # No embedded /./
        # Try to eliminate /../abc/
        $path =~ s%/\.\./(?:[^/]+)(/|$)%$1%g;
        $path =~ s%/\.$%%;      # No trailing /.
        $path =~ s%^\./%%;      # No leading ./
        # What happens with . and / as inputs?
    }
    return($path);
}

sub print_result
{
    my($source, $target, $relpath) = @_;
    if ($verbose)
    {
        print "source  = $ARGV[0]\n";
        print "target  = $ARGV[1]\n";
        print "relpath = $relpath\n";
    }
    else
    {
        print "$relpath\n";
    }
    exit 0;
}

my($source) = resolve($ARGV[0]);
my($target) = resolve($ARGV[1]);
print_result($source, $target, ".") if ($source eq $target);

# Split!
my(@source) = split '/', $source;
my(@target) = split '/', $target;

my $count = scalar(@source);
   $count = scalar(@target) if (scalar(@target) < $count);
my $relpath = "";
my $i;

# Both paths are absolute; Perl splits an empty field 0.
for ($i = 1; $i < $count; $i++)
{
    last if $source[$i] ne $target[$i];
}

for (my $s = $i; $s < scalar(@source); $s++)
{
    $relpath = "$relpath/" if ($s > $i);
    $relpath = "$relpath..";
}
for (my $t = $i; $t < scalar(@target); $t++)
{
    $relpath = "$relpath/" if ($relpath ne "");
    $relpath = "$relpath$target[$t]";
}

print_result($source, $target, $relpath);

Answer 2

This script gives correct results only for inputs that are absolute paths or relative paths without . or ..:

#!/bin/bash

# usage: relpath from to

if [[ "$1" == "$2" ]]
then
    echo "."
    exit
fi

IFS="/"

current=($1)
absolute=($2)

abssize=${#absolute[@]}
cursize=${#current[@]}

while [[ ${absolute[$level]} == ${current[$level]} ]]
do
    (( level++ ))
    if (( level > abssize || level > cursize ))
    then
        break
    fi
done

for ((i = level; i < cursize; i++))
do
    if ((i > level))
    then
        newpath=$newpath"/"
    fi
    newpath=$newpath".."
done

for ((i = level; i < abssize; i++))
do
    if [[ -n $newpath ]]
    then
        newpath=$newpath"/"
    fi
    newpath=$newpath${absolute[i]}
done

echo "$newpath"

Answer 3

Here's a pure shell script that does it:

#! /bin/env bash 

#portable script to find the relative path between two directories

mydir=${0%/}
mydir=${0%/*}
creadlink="$mydir/creadlink"

shopt -s extglob

relpath () {
        path1=$("$creadlink" "$1")
        path2=$("$creadlink" "$2")
        orig1=$path1
        path1=${path1%/}
        path2=${path2%/}
        path1=$path1/
        path2=$path2/

        while :; do
                if test ! "$path1"; then
                        break
                fi
                part1=${path2#$path1}
                if test "${part1#/}" = "$part1"; then
                        path1=${path1%/*}
                        #printf 'continuting with X%sX\n' "$path1" >72
                        continue
                fi
                if test "${path2#$path1}" = "$path2"; then
                        path1=${path1%/*}
                        #printf 'continuting 2 with X%sX\n' "$path1" >&2
                        continue
                fi
                break
        done
        part1=$path1
        path1=${orig1#$part1}
        depth=${path1//+([^\/])/..}
        path1=${path2#$path1}
        path1=${depth}${path2#$part1}
        path1=${path1##+(\/)}
        path1=${path1%/}
        if test ! "$path1"; then
                path1=.
        fi
        printf "$path1"

}

relpath

source: http://www.ynform.org/w/Pub/Relpath

Answer 4

test.sh:

#!/bin/bash                                                                 

cd /home/ubuntu
touch blah
TEST=/home/ubuntu/.//blah
echo TEST=$TEST
TMP=$(readlink -e "$TEST")
echo TMP=$TMP
REL=${TMP#$(pwd)/}
echo REL=$REL

Testing:

$ ./test.sh 
TEST=/home/ubuntu/.//blah
TMP=/home/ubuntu/blah
REL=blah