[SOLVED] How to remove a suffix from string literal in Bash without use of variables?

Issue

I'm trying to get the full path of a file excluding the file name. I'm aware of this approach:

$ var1="$(readlink -f test.sh)"
$ var2="$(basename test.sh)"

$ echo "$var1 $var2"
/home/peki/CodeRepos/shellScripts/test.sh test.sh

$ echo "${var1%"$var2"}"
/home/peki/CodeRepos/shellScripts/

But how would I do it by just manipulating string literals produced by function calls; i.e., how would I do it without storing "$(readlink -f test.sh)" and "$(basename test.sh)" in variables?

Solution

I believe this should work:

echo "$(cd "$(dirname "test.sh")"; pwd -P)"

All this is doing is (in a subshell) cd'ing to the directory containing "test.sh" and using pwd to print that directory.

Answered By - CheChe