basename

{{Short description|Shell command for extracting the last name from a path}}

{{Infobox software

| name = basename

| logo =

| screenshot =

| screenshot size =

| caption =

| developer =

| released = {{Start date and age|1979|1}}

| latest release version =

| latest release date =

| programming language = C

| operating system = Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Inferno

| platform = Cross-platform

| genre = Command

| license = coreutils: GPLv3+
Plan 9: MIT License

| website =

}}

basename is a shell command for extracting the last name of a file path.

The command was introduced in X/Open Portability Guidelines issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX and the Single Unix Specification.{{man|cu|basename|SUS}} It first appeared in 4.4BSD.{{man|1|basename|FreeBSD}} The version in GNU Core Utilities was written by David MacKenzie.{{man|1|basename|Linux}} The command is available for Windows as part of the GnuWin32 project[http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm CoreUtils for Windows] and UnxUtils.[http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities]

Use

The Single UNIX Specification is: {{code|basename path [suffix]}}. The required argument, path, is a file path string. The second argument, which is optional, is text to remove from the end of the last name if it ends with the text.