How can I set the current working directory to the directory of the script in Bash?

Question

I'm writing a Bash script. I need the current working directory to always be the directory that the script is located in.

The default behavior is that the current working directory in the script is that of the shell from which I run it, but I do not want this behavior.

Answer 1

TL;DR

#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$0")"

The long winded explanation

How does this work and how does it deal with edge and corner cases?

• You type a command launching the script in your interactive shell.
• That interactive shell calls bash with some name which tells bash the script to run.
• That bash then calls dirname with the bash argument which points to the script.
• Finally, that bash then calls cd with the output of dirname as its argument.

---

script invocation command	bash argument	dirname argument	cd argument
foo (found in $PATH at /path/to/foo)	/path/to/foo	/path/to/foo	/path/to
bash foo	foo	foo	.
/foo	/foo	/foo	/
./foo	./foo	./foo	.
"/pa th/to/foo"	/pa th/to/foo	/pa th/to/foo	/pa th/to
"./pa th/to/foo"	./pa th/to/foo	./pa th/to/foo	./pa th/to
"../pa th/to/foo"	../pa th/to/foo	../pa th/to/foo	../pa th/to
"../../pa th/to/foo"	../../pa th/to/foo	../../pa th/to/foo	../../pa th/to
"pa th/to/foo"	pa th/to/foo	pa th/to/foo	pa th/to
--help/foo	--help/foo *	N/A	N/A
--help	N/A **	N/A	N/A

On symlinks

The cd command will follow symlinks if they are involved. A symlink usually exists to be followed, so in most situations following the symlink is the correct thing to do. Why would it be a problem for the code in the script to follow a symlink when it was just fine to follow that same symlink a few microseconds ago when loading the script?

On command arguments starting with hyphens

Elaborating on the two cases of arguments starting with hyphens in above table (marked with * and **, respectively):

* There is only one case where the argument to the dirname could begin with a -, and that is the relative path case --help/foo. If the script is in a subdirectory called --help, the script execution will run bash --help/foo, and bash does not know that option --help/foo and will therefore abort with an error message. The script will never execute, so it does not matter what the cd "$(dirname "$0")" would have executed.

** Note that calling the script --help makes the shell not find the command when you are typing --help in the same directory. Alternatively, with $PATH containing the current directory, the script will be run as /path/to/--help or ./--help, always with something in front of the - character.

Unless bash introduces command line arguments with a parameter separated by a =, it is unlikely to impossible to pass a - argument to bash which contains a / later, and which is accepted by bash.

If you can rely on dirname accepting -- argument (bash builtin cd will certainly accept --), you can change the script snippet to

cd -- "$(dirname -- "$0")"

Please do comment if you can figure out a way to construct an argument beginning with - which can be sneaked past bash.

Nota bene

The above snippet also works with non-bash /bin/sh.

Answer 2

The following also works:

cd "${0%/*}"

The syntax is thoroughly described in this StackOverflow answer.

Answer 3

Try the following simple one-liners:

---

For all UNIX/OSX/Linux

dir="$(cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "$0")" && pwd -P)"

Bash

dir="$(cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd -P)"

^{Note: A double dash (--) is used in commands to signify the end of command options, so files containing dashes or other special characters won't break the command.}

^{Note: In Bash, use ${BASH_SOURCE[0]} in favor of $0, otherwise the path can break when sourcing it (source/.).}

---

*For Linux, Mac and other BSD:

cd "$(dirname "$(realpath -- "$0")")";

^{Note: realpath should be installed in the most popular Linux distribution by default (like Ubuntu), but in some it can be missing, so you have to install it.}

^{Note: If you're using Bash, use ${BASH_SOURCE[0]} in favor of $0, otherwise the path can break when sourcing it (source/.).}

Otherwise you could try something like that (it will use the first existing tool):

cd "$(dirname "$(readlink -f -- "$0" || realpath -- "$0")")"

---

For Linux specific:

cd "$(dirname "$(readlink -f -- "$0")")"

---

*Using GNU readlink on BSD/Mac:

cd "$(dirname "$(greadlink -f -- "$0")")"

Note: You need to have coreutils installed (e.g. 1. Install Homebrew, 2. brew install coreutils).

---

In bash

In bash you can use Parameter Expansions to achieve that, like:

cd "${0%/*}"

but it doesn't work if the script is run from the same directory.

Alternatively you can define the following function in bash:

realpath () {
  [[ "$1" = /* ]] && echo "$1" || echo "$PWD/${1#./}"
}

^{This function takes 1 argument. If argument has already absolute path, print it as it is, otherwise print $PWD variable + filename argument (without ./ prefix).}

or here is the version taken from Debian .bashrc file:

function realpath()
{
    f=$@
    if [ -d "$f" ]; then
        base=""
        dir="$f"
    else
        base="/$(basename -- "$f")"
        dir="$(dirname -- "$f")"
    fi
    dir="$(cd -- "$dir" && /bin/pwd)"
    echo "$dir$base"
}

---

Related:

• How to detect the current directory in which I run my shell script?

• How do I get the directory where a Bash script is located from within the script itself?

• Bash script absolute path with OS X

• Reliable way for a Bash script to get the full path to itself

See also:

How can I get the behavior of GNU's readlink -f on a Mac?

Answer 4

cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")"

It's easy. It works.

Answer 5

The accepted answer works well for scripts that have not been symlinked elsewhere, such as into $PATH.

#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$0")"

However if the script is run via a symlink,

ln -sv ~/project/script.sh ~/bin/; 
~/bin/script.sh

This will cd into the ~/bin/ directory and not the ~/project/ directory, which will probably break your script if the purpose of the cd is to include dependencies relative to ~/project/

The symlink safe answer is below:

#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")")"  # cd current directory

readlink -f is required to resolve the absolute path of the potentially symlinked file.

The quotes are required to support filepaths that could potentially contain whitespace (bad practice, but its not safe to assume this won't be the case)

Answer 6

There are a lot of correct answers in here, but one that tends to be more useful for me (making sure a script's relative paths remain predictable/work) is to use pushd/popd:

pushd "$(dirname ${BASH_SOURCE:0})"
trap popd EXIT

# ./xyz, etc...

This will push the source file's directory on to a navigation stack, thereby changing the working directory, but then, when the script exits (for whatever reason, including failure), the trap will run popd, restoring the current working directory before it was executed. If the script were to cd and then fail, your terminal could be left in an unpredictable state after the execution ends - the trap prevents this.

Answer 7

This script seems to work for me:

#!/bin/bash
mypath=`realpath $0`
cd `dirname $mypath`
pwd

The pwd command line echoes the location of the script as the current working directory no matter where I run it from.

Answer 8

I take this and it works.

#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$0")"
CUR_DIR=$(pwd)

Answer 9

Get the real path to your script

if [ -L $0 ] ; then
    ME=$(readlink $0)
else
    ME=$0
fi
DIR=$(dirname $ME)

(This is answer to the same my question here: Get the name of the directory where a script is executed)

Answer 10

cd "`dirname $(readlink -f ${0})`"

Answer 11

Most answers either don't handle files which are symlinked via a relative path, aren't one-liners or don't handle BSD (Mac). A solution which does all three is:

HERE=$(cd "$(dirname "$BASH_SOURCE")"; cd -P "$(dirname "$(readlink "$BASH_SOURCE" || echo .)")"; pwd)

First, cd to bash's conception of the script's directory. Then readlink the file to see if it is a symlink (relative or otherwise), and if so, cd to that directory. If not, cd to the current directory (necessary to keep things a one-liner). Then echo the current directory via pwd.

You could add -- to the arguments of cd and readlink to avoid issues of directories named like options, but I don't bother for most purposes.

You can see the full explanation with illustrations here:

https://www.binaryphile.com/bash/2020/01/12/determining-the-location-of-your-script-in-bash.html

Answer 12

echo $PWD

PWD is an environment variable.

Answer 13

If you just need to print present working directory then you can follow this.

$ vim test

#!/bin/bash
pwd
:wq to save the test file.

Give execute permission:

chmod u+x test

Then execute the script by ./test then you can see the present working directory.