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Thus, we need to start with the current working directory and apply the navigation operations which are separated by the path separator again. In this case, the operation is ".", which means: stay in the current folder. (Thus, one has to type ./foo in order to execute foo in the current directory, if . is not in the path-variable).
Every directory on a Unix system (and probably every other system too) contains at least two directory entries. These are . (current directory) and .. (parent directory). In the case of the root directory, these point to the same place, but with any other directory, they are different. You can see this for yourself using the stat, pwd and cd ...
46. The . is the current directory, while .. signifies the parent directory. It makes things quicker at the command line as well so you don't need to type out full paths. example: go up 2 directories: cd ..\..\. or on a UNIX based system, to run executable binaries in the current directory: ./program.
Thankyou for the answer, but we already have an Answer, for future reference, try not to answer questions with a Green Fill on their tag, or the Check on an answer, as that means the question already has a definite answer, and Only answer in another case if you Know 100% that your answer is more efficient, better, or has more information the other didnt.
As outlined by others, mv * ../ is the most straight forward way to copy all files from a sub directory to its parent directory. However, if the list of files to copy is very large, you may run into this error:-bash: /bin/mv: Argument list too long (see this article for more info). Then you can use the other suggestion:
How to find duplicate files i.e. with same name that exist in same parent directory? 10 Can I add a Windows Explorer context menu option to start command prompt in the selected directory?
The short answer is. dirname /a/b/c/d/file | xargs basename. => d. The first step, getting the dirname of the path, yields the path of the parent folder, as seen below. dirname /a/b/c/d/file. => /a/b/c/d. The path of the parent folder is then piped to another command with |. Since basename (and dirname) don't run on streams and instead just on ...
@Roger But then there wouldn't be the invariant that every directory has a .. parent directory within it. Since the system already has to handle directories that are their own parents (consider hard-linking a directory into itself), making the root its own parent requires no new functionality or special rules, so that decision obeys the principle of least surprise.
I'm nested deep in a file tree, and I'd like to find which parent directory contains a file. E.g. I'm in a set of nested GIT repositories and want to find the .git directory controlling the files I'm currently at. I'd hope for something like. find -searchup -iname ".git"
get the directory of the file in a very general way (when file is known with a relative or absolute pathname, or no path at all): So to get the parent of that directory: the_parent_dir="$(cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "${filename}")/.." && pwd)" cd -P : print the "real" (physical) path, instead of a path using symbolic links.