Re: [Help-bash] Best way to remove trailing '/' from a path?

[Stephane Chazelas]

2015-04-20 14:58:22 -0600, Eric Blake:
> On 04/20/2015 02:20 PM, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
> > 2015-04-10 22:11:37 -0500, Peng Yu:
> >> Hi, ${VAR%%+(/)} has been suggested here. But it is not robust if $VAR
> >> is just a bunch of slashes. Does anybody have a robust yet succinct
> >> implementation? Thanks.
> >>
> >> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9018723/what-is-the-simplest-way-to-remove-trailing-slashes-from-each-parameter
> > [...]
> > 
> > Try:
> > 
> > dirname -- "$VAR/."
> 
> Won't work on systems where // is a special root.  There, 'dirname --
> //' correctly outputs '//', but if $VAR is //, your line would output
> '/'; similarly, if $VAR is /, your line would output '//'.
[...]

True.

dirname -- "$VAR//."

would at least work properly for "/". It would (potentially
incorrectly) report "/" for "//" as well, but I doubt that would
be a problem for the OP.

> And I'm half wondering if the original poster is trying to
> (re-)implement dirname without forking.

Then he could use a shell with the functionality of dirname
built-in like ksh93 (command /opt/ast/bin/dirname) or zsh
(${VAR:h}).



-- 
Stephane