Get parent directory of current directory in Ruby

Question

I understand that I can get the current directory

$CurrentDir = Dir.pwd 

What about the parent directory of the current directory?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

Perhaps the simplest solution:

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

Answer 3

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 a component of the path that File.dirname does not support.

This, of course, only works if filepec is absolute and not relative. To make it absolute, you can do this:

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