name

Small, focused CLI that merges the behavior of dirname and basename with a few convenient extras. Designed for shell scripts and Makefiles where a compact, predictable filename-manipulation utility is useful.

Install

• From source (recommended):

go install github.com/grimdork/name@latest

• Build locally:

make build

Usage

name [OPTIONS]... [FILENAME]

• name -h shows help
• name -v prints the build version and build date (when provided via ldflags)

This tool intentionally operates on a single path per run (one input filename, one output). It's meant to be a tiny, predictable helper in shell pipelines and Makefiles.

Flags

• -p, --nopath — return only the base filename (strip directory path)
• -s, --stripsuffix — strip the suffix (file extension) from the name
• -S, --onlysuffix — return only the suffix (extension) without the leading dot
• -n, --noname — return only the path (directory component). On bare filenames this is normalized to an empty string rather than .
• -a, --absolute — expand the name to an absolute path
• -0, --null — terminate output with a NUL (0x00) byte instead of a newline. Useful when embedding this single result into a larger NUL-separated stream or when passing to xargs -0.

Examples

# basename-like
name -p /usr/bin/env
# => env

# strip suffix
name -s main.go
# => main

# suffix only
name -S archive.tar.gz
# => gz

# dirname-like
name -n /sbin/ping6
# => /sbin

# absolute path
name -a main.go
# => /home/alice/src/name/main.go

# combined: absolute + strip suffix
name -as main.go
# => /home/alice/src/name/main

# NUL-terminated output (safe to embed or pass to xargs -0)
name -0 some/path/file.txt | xargs -0 -I{} echo "got: {}"

Behavior notes and edge cases

• The -S (only suffix) flag takes precedence and returns immediately; other flags are not applied when -S is used.
• When -n (directory-only) is used on a bare filename (e.g. foo), filepath.Dir("foo") returns .; this tool normalises that to an empty string for scripting convenience.
• Suffix handling follows filepath.Ext: the suffix is the final . component. For archive.tar.gz the suffix is gz and -s removes only the final .gz.
• This program operates on a single path per run. If you need to operate on many files, use find, git ls-files, or a shell loop and call name once per file.

Exit codes

• 0 — success
• 1 — user/input/usage errors (missing filename, parse error)
• 2 — runtime/program errors (I/O failure, processing error)

Development

• Run tests:

make test

• Vulnerability scan:

make govulncheck

• Linting is currently disabled in CI due to a runner/tooling compatibility issue; the Makefile includes a placeholder lint target.

Contributing

Open issues and PRs are welcome. Please run the test suite and include a short description of your change.

License

MIT — see LICENSE