How do I extract a file/folder_name only from a path?

Question

Unfortunately I suck at regexp. If I have a path like so:

/long/path/to/file, I just need to extact file.

If someone supplies file/ I just need file.

If someone supplies /file/, I still need just file.

I've been using stringr functions as a crutch but this seems like straight up grep territory. Help, please?

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 13 '12 at 23:56

17

If I understand correctly, you could use the basename function.

f <- "/long/path/to/file"
basename(f)
# [1] "file"

answered Mar 13 '12 at 23:56

Joshua Ulrich

A more elegant solution and it also takes care of trailing slashes. Thanks very much! – Maiasaura Mar 14 '12 at 00:04

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 13 '12 at 23:50

2

What about this?

> path <- "/long/path/to/file"
> require(stringr)
> str_extract(path, "[^/]*$")
[1] "file"

answered Mar 13 '12 at 23:50

EDi

What if I need to lose the trailing slash as well? – Maiasaura Mar 13 '12 at 23:52

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 29 '21 at 08:35

Sorry for giving an answer to a very old question, but I was led here searching for a way to extract only the directory part of a full filename.

So here is, how you extract the directory:

> f <- "/long/path/to/file"
> dirname(f)
[1] "/long/path/to"

3 Answers3