Assuming blah is in a var named name, you can use: dirname => "${name%/*}" basename => "${name##*/}" Sadly you can't use it with !$ since it's not a v

Assuming blah is in a var named name, you can use: dirname => "${name%/*}" basename => "${name##*/}" Sadly you can't use it with !$ since it's not a variable. The closest you can do is: $ ls foo/bar/baz ls: foo/bar/baz: No such file or directory $ last=!$; echo "${last##*/}" baz $ echo "${last%/*}" foo/bar