Variable that stores filename it is in

Question

Is there a way to store a filename in a variable where the variable argument is written? Instead of hardcoding the filename, i would want the variable to know which file its in and store the name of the file in a variable.

Answer 1

dirname $0 will give the directory relative to how it was called, so you need to get the expanded path like this:

FULLPATH=$( cd $(dirname $0); pwd)

basename $0 will give the shell script name so

SHORTNAME=$(basename $0)

$FULLPATH/$SHORTNAME  # is the fully qualified location of the current script.

The full path name is discussed as the most frequent bash question: Getting the source directory of a Bash script from within