Re: how to get a directory's "full" name?

[Paul D. Smith]

%% "Aditya Kher" <address@hidden> writes:

  >> cd to arg, then echo full dir name.  is there a simpler or built-in
  >> way that's better?

  ak> the unix command dirname gives the directory name
  ak> see also basename for getting file name in a similar manner

dirname and basename are simply string munchers: they break up strings
on "/" etc.  They do NOT evaluate their arguments to find
fully-qualified pathnames.

In addition, the make functions $(dir ...), $(notdir ...), $(basename ...),
etc. are much better/faster for this kind of thing, as long as you don't
need to work on a shell variable.

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