Normalizing Path Names with Bash

Regular expressions were introduced in bash 3.0. Bash 3.2 changed regular expression handling slightly in that quotes around regular expressions became part of the regular expression. So, if you have a version of bash (with regular expression support) and the code doesn't work, put the regular expression in the while loop in quotes.

The entire function and some test code follows:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Usage: normalize_path PATH
#
# Remove /./ and dir/.. sequences from a pathname and write result to stdout.

function normalize_path()
{
    # Remove all /./ sequences.
    # 这个替代的表达式不能工作的很好

    # 比如 /./ . /./ . /. 这样的形式 只能变成  /  . /   ./.

    local   path=${1./}
   
    # Remove dir/.. sequences.

    # =~ 是bash中用于正则表达式匹配的 运算符
    while [[ $path =~ ([^/][^/]*//././) ]]
    do

       # BASH_REMATCH[0] 表示匹配上的字符串
        path=${path/${BASH_REMATCH[0]}/}
    done
    echo $path
}

 

 

# $0 类似c语言的argv[0]

# $* 表示 所有的参数，不包括arg[0]

# $@ 表示 所有的参数

# 但是我们经过测试，我发现 $* 是一个全局的概念 也就是将所有的参数算成了一个整体

# 所以在for循环中 使用的是 $@ 而不是 $*

# $# 表示 参数个数

if [[ $(basename $0 .sh) == 'normalize_path' ]]; then
    if [[ "$*" ]]; then
        for p in "$@"
        do
            printf "%-30s => %s/n" $p $(normalize_path $p)
        done
    else
        for p in /test/../test/file test/../test/file .././test/../test/file
        do
            printf "%-30s => %s/n" $p $(normalize_path $p)
        done
    fi
fi


#####################################################################

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# kate: tab-width 4; indent-width 4; replace-tabs false;

Since, older versions of bash don't support regular expressions the second version does the same thing using sed instead:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Usage: normalize_path PATH
#
# Remove /./ and dir/.. sequences from a pathname and write result to stdout.

function normalize_path()
{
    # Remove all /./ sequences.
    local   path=${1./}
   
    # Remove first dir/.. sequence.
    local   npath=$(echo $path | sed -e 's;[^/][^/]*//././;;')
   
    # Remove remaining dir/.. sequence.
    while [[ $npath != $path ]]
    do
        path=$npath
        npath=$(echo $path | sed -e 's;[^/][^/]*//././;;')
    done
    echo $path
}

if [[ $(basename $(basename $0 .sh) .old) == 'normalize_path' ]]; then
    if [[ "$*" ]]; then
        for p in "$@"
        do
            printf "%-30s => %s/n" $p $(normalize_path $p)
        done
    else
        for p in /test/../test/file test/../test/file .././test/../test/file
        do
            printf "%-30s => %s/n" $p $(normalize_path $p)
        done
    fi
fi


#####################################################################

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You can run the script directly and it runs a few tests:

$ bash normalize_path.sh
/test/../test/file             => /test/file
test/../test/file              => test/file
.././test/../test/file         => ../test/file

You can also pass in test cases on the command line:

$ bash normalize_path.sh ../d1/./d2/../f1 a/b/c/../d/../e
../d1/./d2/../f1               => ../d1/f1
a/b/c/../d/../e                => a/b/e

Normalized path names are never necessary but they're often easier to comprehend at a glance.