Re: basename sucks

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > > Regarding the original query, why not just use awk?

   Or just use basename with a little xargs added.  This seems very
   readable and obvious to me.

     echo /home/me/foo | xargs -l basename
     foo

   And then zero terminated strings are already supported.

     printf "/home/me/foo\0" | xargs -0 -l basename

When doing the filter trick, you'd end up forking three new processes
each time.  Which can cause quite a serious slow down in some scripts.

   > You have touched a nerve...  :-) From the top of my head:
   > 
   > cat -- sed ':'
   > tac -- sed '1!G;h;$!d'
   > grep -- sed 'PATTERN/!d'
   > head -- sed '10q'
   > tail -- sed -e ':a' -e '$q;N;11,$D;ba'
   > dirname -- sed 's;[^/]*$;;'
   > basename -- sed 's;.*/;;'
   > cp OLD NEW -- sed 'w NEW' OLD
   > 
   > One can always just use something else, but most often the something
   > else is painful. 

   When trying to construct a filter are any of those alternatives
   really that painful?  The basename one in particular seems quite
   intuitive to me.

IMHO, yes, they are.  Specially if you have to do it a couple times in
different scripts.  But not so painful that I will submit a patch for
basename. :-)