Bash extracting file basename from long path

It's better to use an array to hold the filenames. A string variable will not handle filenames which contain spaces.

Also, you don't need to use the basename command. Instead use bash's built-in string manipulation.

Try this:

files=( /very/long/path/to/various/files/*.file )for file in "${files[@]}"do  filename="${file##*/}"  filenameWithoutExtension="${filename%.*}"  echo "$filenameWithoutExtension"done

Solution with basename for your question

for file in $filesdo  file_name=$(basename $file)  file_name_witout_ext=${file_name%.file}done

edit (generic way to extract filename without (single) extension)

for file in $filesdo  file_name=$(basename $file)  file_name_witout_ext=${file_name%.*}done

Another thing that can happen is to have filename like "archive.tar.gz". In this case you will have two (or multiple extension). You can then use a more greddy operator

for file in $filesdo  file_name=$(basename $file)  file_name_witout_ext=${file_name%%.*}done

It's simpler like this:

files=(/very/long/path/to/various/files/*.file)names=("${files[@]##*/}") names=("${names[@]%.*}")progname -files "${files[@]}" -names "${names[@]}"

Or if you could only pass them as a single argument:

progname -files "${files[*]}" -names "${names[*]}"