Extract pattern from text line

[TehOne]

Hey,

the text line is always a full path, examples:

/test/test2/test3/test.file
/test/test2/test3/test4/test5/.....test.file134

I need to extract the directory name, so

so output will be:

/test/test2/test3/
/test/test2/test3/test4/test5/

I've tryd using sed but it didn't work out that well, I ended up getting the oposite results:

echo /test/test2/test3/noname.rar | sed 's/\/.*\///'

gives noname.rar :/

[secondmouse]

command dirname is the answer
cat file_list | while read line; do echo `dirname $line`; done

[burschik]

I've tryd using sed but it didn't work out that well, I ended up getting the oposite results:

echo /test/test2/test3/noname.rar | sed 's/\/.*\///'

gives noname.rar :/

Well, yes, obviously. What you are saying is: replace any string starting and ending with "/" with nothing. Clearly, the longest string matching that pattern is "/test/test2/test3/", which gets replaced with the empty string. What you need is the opposite: you need to replace the longest string not containing any "/" at the end of the string, i.e. something like:

sed 's|[^/]\+$||'

That having been said, you probably should use dirname anyway, like secondmouse suggested.

[ghostdog74]

in bash, no need for external commands

# s=/test/test2/test3/test.file
# echo ${s%/*}
/test/test2/test3

[secondmouse]

in bash, no need for external commands

# s=/test/test2/test3/test.file
# echo ${s%/*}
/test/test2/test3

ghostdog74, I just found out your solution is not just simpler, also better, as dirname will fail on situation like this:
s="/test/test2/test3/test doc" #(file name contains space)
dirname $s

bash exits with status 1 and prints:
dirname: extra operand `doc'
Try `dirname --help' for more information.

Edit:
actually to make dirname work in this situation is to use double quotations around $s
dirname "$s"

[ghostdog74]

that's because you did not put quotes around your variable