Relative to Absolute Path in Shell Script

Simple bash function to convert relative paths to absolute pats
fun_abs
{ echo “`cd \`dirname $1\`; pwd`/`basename $1`” }

http://www.robertpeaslee.com/index.php/converting-a-relative-path-to-an-absolute-path-in-bash/

UPDATE: unfortuately the above only works for directories that exist - the perl hack will get around this

fun_abs
{FILE=`$PERL -e "use File::Spec::Functions qw[rel2abs];print rel2abs('$1');"`; echo "$FILE"; }

Get File Extension in Shell Script

Returns the last file extension in the file name
echo "thisfile.txt.log"awk -F . '{print $NF}' # returns "log"

http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/09/29/short-tip-get-file-extension-in-shell-script/