Get parent directory of current directory in Ruby

Question

I understand I can get current directory by

$CurrentDir = Dir.pwd

How about parent directory of current directory?

Answer 1

Perhaps the simplest solution:

puts File.expand_path('../.') 

Answer 2

I think an even simpler solution is to use File.dirname:

2.3.0 :005 > Dir.pwd
 => "/Users/kbennett/temp"
2.3.0 :006 > File.dirname(Dir.pwd)
 => "/Users/kbennett"
2.3.0 :007 > File.basename(Dir.pwd)
 => "temp"

File.basename returns the component of the path that File.dirname does not.

This, of course, works only if the filespec is absolute and not relative. To be sure to make it absolute one could do this:

2.3.0 :008 > File.expand_path('.')
 => "/Users/kbennett/temp"
2.3.0 :009 > File.dirname(File.expand_path('.'))
 => "/Users/kbennett"

Answer 3

File.expand_path("..", Dir.pwd)