Getting the parent of a directory in Bash

Question

If I have a file path such as...

/home/smith/Desktop/Test
/home/smith/Desktop/Test/

How do I change the string so it will be the parent dir

Answer 1

if for whatever reason you are interested in navigating up a specific number of directories you could also do: nth_path=$(cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && cd ../../../ && pwd). This would give 3 parents directories up