How can I print the folder of a relative path in Perl?

Question

I have a script which takes a relative path to a folder. Is there any way of getting the name of the folder/directory which is pointed to? If needs be, it could be the absolute path, and I will use regex to strip it.

Say I am executing:

/example/a/b/c/d/perl.pl

eg 1

If they input:

../../

I want it to be able to return 'b' (or the absolute path up to b, I can write a script to strip it).

eg2

If they input:

./

I want it to be able to return 'd' (or again, the absolute path up to d).

Is there an easy way to do this, as the only way I can think of is counting the number of ../ and using that to do a regex on the absolute path of the file, which takes alot of processing.

Thanks

Answer 1

That's simple - just use Cwd module:

use Cwd 'abs_path';
my $abs_path = abs_path($file); 

Answer 2

Relative to the script being executed (as you requested):

use Cwd            qw( realpath );
use File::Basename qw( dirname );

my $script_dir = dirname(realpath($0));
my $abs_path = real_path("$script_dir/$rel_path");

Relative to the current work directory:

use Cwd qw( realpath );

my $abs_path = realpath($rel_path);

In both cases, symlinks are resolved. File::Spec provides functions that don't resolve symlinks if that's what you prefer.