Sed oneliner to get filename and containing directory

Question

I need to extract the filename and containing directory from a full path (DOS syntax). I need to do this using sed as it is part of a larger regular expression.

Example input: ..\home\test\somedir\anotherdir\myfile.txt

Expected output: anotherdir\myfile.txt

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

Just go at it methodically. You want to divide a line into three parts: an arbitrary prefix .*, and then twice a backslash followed by non-backslash characters \\[^\\]*. Capture what's after the next-to-last backslash and drop the rest.

printf %s "$dos_path" | sed 's/^.*\\\([^\\]*\\[^\\]*\)$/\1/'

(Beware of echo as some shells expand backslashes.)

Answer 2

Is there a particular reason to not use awk?

echo $DIR | awk -F'\' '{ print $(NF-1) "\\" $NF }'