How to remove last part of a path in bash?

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How to delete part of a path in an interactive shell?

Is there a short-cut in bash that lets you delete the last part of a path?

Example: /usr/local/bin should become /usr/local/ (or /usr/local)

I know of Ctrl+w but it deletes the complete last word and I'd like to retain that functionality, too.

@Siggy... You've mentioned `Ctrl-w`.. this is a key-combination which has nothing to do with `bash`. Key-combinations like this are for a user interface, like the terminal or text-editor or menus.. They are pretty much meaningless in a bash script... The command-line is not itself `bash`; it belongs to the terminal which passes the commands on to bash (or whatever shell you are running)... Your question is, at a glance, ambiguous; that is why you have two different types of answers... — Peter.O, Jan 10 '12 at 16:41

Kevin · Answer 1 · 2012-01-10T23:57:41.990

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In a path, it's quite easy, dirname takes off the last component of the path. And since it's a program (as opposed to a builtin) it's completely portable between shells.

$ dirname /usr/local/bin
/usr/local

It appears you mean while editing an active line at the prompt. In that case Nikhil's comment of esc backspace (consecutively, not both at the same time) is correct.

edited Jan 10 '12 at 23:57

answered Jan 10 '12 at 15:43

Kevin

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The question is about command line edition, not about string manipulation. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jan 10 '12 at 23:45
I see. @nikhil you should post that comment as an answer so I can delete this. Or at least so Siggy can accept it. – Kevin Jan 11 '12 at 00:01
Do not know, maybe does not answer the question but I Googled for string manipulation, found this and I am happy so upvoting. – h22 Nov 17 '20 at 15:06

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 14 '20 at 07:26

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Assuming, you are using emacs bindings, you can type Alt+Backspace to delete the previous word.

edited Apr 14 '20 at 07:26

AdminBee

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answered Jan 10 '12 at 15:43

dogbane

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This was what I was looking. But can you tell me where this shortcut comes from? I can't find it in the output of `bind -P`. – Jan 10 '12 at 22:33
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@Siggy it should be named `backward-kill-word`. – Jan 10 '12 at 23:29
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@Siggy `Backspace` appears as `\C-?`, because it's ASCII character number 127, which is a control character (a non-printable character). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jan 11 '12 at 00:12
This doesn't work for me. – Kevin Jan 11 '12 at 00:24
`$ bind -P |grep backward-kill-word` says `backward-kill-word can be found on "\M-\C-h", "\M-\C-?".` – Colin D Bennett Mar 12 '15 at 17:53

How to remove last part of a path in bash?

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