[ale] bash, full filename

[joe at madewell.com (Joe Steele)]

On Saturday, November 29, 2003 1:50 PM, David Corbin wrote:
>
> How can I take a filename (which may or may not be relative) and convert it to
> be a fully qualified filename, in bash?

I'm presuming that if it is relative, you mean that it is relative to 
$PWD, and if it is not relative, then you mean that it begins with 
"/".

Well, as a first stab at it, how about:

   if [ -n "${filename%%/*}" ] ; then filename="${PWD}/$filename" ; fi

This assumes that the name is stored in $filename.  It checks if the 
name has a leading slash, and if not, it prepends the name with $PWD.

There's probably a better way....  But this way is done all within bash 
without external commands.

--Joe