Unix shell script find out which directory the script file resides?

Question

Basically I need to run the script with paths related to the shell script file location, how can I change the current directory to the same directory as where the script fil

Answer 1

As theMarko suggests:

BASEDIR=$(dirname $0)
echo $BASEDIR

This works unless you execute the script from the same directory where the script resides, in which case you get a value of '.'

To get around that issue use:

current_dir=$(pwd)
script_dir=$(dirname $0)

if [ $script_dir = '.' ]
then
script_dir="$current_dir"
fi

You can now use the variable current_dir throughout your script to refer to the script directory. However this may still have the symlink issue.