Can I get the absolute path to the current script in Korn Shell?

Question

Is it possible to find out the full path to the script that is currently executing in Korn shell?

i.e. if my script is in /opt/scripts/myscript.ksh, can I programmatically inside that script discover '/opt/scripts/myscript.ksh'?

Thanks,

Answer 1

How the script was called is stored in the variable $0. You can use readlink to get the absolute file name:

readlink -f "$0"

Answer 2

You could use:

## __SCRIPTNAME - name of the script without the path
##
typeset -r __SCRIPTNAME="${0##*/}"

## __SCRIPTDIR - path of the script (as entered by the user!)
##
__SCRIPTDIR="${0%/*}"

## __REAL_SCRIPTDIR - path of the script (real path, maybe a link)
##
__REAL_SCRIPTDIR=$( cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "$(command -v -- "$0")")" && pwd -P )

Answer 3

This works also, although it won't give the "true" path if it's a link. It's simpler, but less exact.

SCRIPT_PATH="$(whence ${0})"

Answer 4

Try which command.

which scriptname

will give you the full qualified name of the script along with its absolute path

Answer 5

"readlink -f" would be the best if it was portable, because it resolves every links found for both directories and files.

On mac os x there is no "readlink -f" (except maybe via macports), so you can only use "readlink" to get the destination of a specific symbolic link file.

The $(cd -P ... pwd -P) technique is nice but only works to resolve links for directories leading to the script, it doesn't work if the script itself is a symlink

Also, one case that wasn't mentionnend : when you launch a script by passing it as an argument to a shell (/bin/sh /path/to/myscript.sh), "$0" is not usable in this case

I took a look to mysql "binaries", many of them are actually shell scripts ; and now i understand why they ask for a --basedir option or need to be launched from a specific working directory ; this is because there is no good solution to locate the targeted script

Answer 6

use this :

dir = $(dirname $0)

Answer 7

This is what I did:

if [[ $0 != "/"* ]]; then
  DIR=`pwd`/`dirname $0`
else
  DIR=`dirname $0`
fi