Change directory working directory in shell script

Question

I am trying to write a simple shell script, which will change the directory to the shell script directory and echo it.

This is the script:

#!/bin/bash
# cd '/explicit/path/to/script'
cd $(dirname $0)
echo $(dirname $0)

The output indeed is always, even if I use an explicite cd to the script dir.

/bin

What am I missing?

Answer 1

You need to run the script instead of sourcing it:

/path/to/script.sh

(without .).

When you run

. /path/to/script.sh

$0 is your current shell, which is presumably in /bin (hence the behaviour you're seeing). Note that it needn't be /bin/bash, the shebang doesn't have any effect when sourcing a script.

Lucas' other points are valid, you should use quotes and just run dirname directly, without echo.

Answer 2

The variable $0 points to the shell script that you execute itself. So if you have a file in that contains this

#!/bin/sh
echo "$0"

and copy it to /bin/my-script and to ~/somewhere/my-script-2, make both copies executable you can observe this behavior (I assume /bin is in your $PATH):

$ my-script
/bin/my-script
$ ~/somewhere/my-script-2
/home/luc/somewhere/my-script-2
$ cd
$ somewhere/my-script-2
somewhere/my-script-2
$ ../../bin/my-script
../../bin/my-script
$ cd /bin
$ ./my-script
./my-script

and so on.

In an interactive shell $0 points to the shell you execute and that is most probably in /bin. So if you source the above shell scripts you will always see the path to your shell interpreter: /bin/bash . For this the two script don't have to be executable:

$ . my-script
/bin/bash
$ . ~/somewhere/my-script-2
/bin/bash
$ cd
$ . somewhere/my-script-2
/bin/bash
$ . ../../bin/my-script
/bin/bash
$ cd /bin
$ . ./my-script
/bin/bash

The reason is that a sourced script is executed in the same process that sources it and $0 is not changed ($@ is updated though).

If dirname "$0" prints /bin for you, that just means the file you execute is in /bin or you are running dirname from a interactive session or a sourced script and the interpreter you use is in /bin.

Some other points:

• You don't need to do echo "$(dirname "$0")", dirname "$0" will do the same.
• Use pwd the get the current working directory.
• Put quotes around $0 and command substitution as you might run into problems otherwise. Try something like cd $(echo a b c) to see the problem.