pathmut is a path string manipulation utility

This was made because I'm tired of resorting to basename, dirname, cut -d. -f1 or whatever other random core util to just extract some information from paths.

Important to know this utility only works with path strings and doesn't touch the file system whatsoever.

$ pathmut
Mutates path strings

Usage: pathmut [COMMAND or COMPONENT]

Commands:
  get      Read a path component [default]
  delete   Remove a path component
  replace  Replace an existing path component
  set      Set a path component
  has      Check if a path component exists
  is       Ask questions about a file path
  help     Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help information
  -V, --version  Print version information

Components:
  ext      File extension
  stem     File stem
  prefix   File prefix
  name     File name
  parent   Parent of the file or directory
  n        Ordinal of the nth component

Installation

For now, you have to build from source. The package is available on crates.io and can be installed with cargo.

cargo install pathmut

You can also build using nix if you have flakes enabled.

nix shell github:rutrum/pathmut

Future Development

I'd like this to be the all in one tool for manipulating path strings. This tool should never touch or look at the actual filesystem, which means it shouldn't be able to answer if a path exists, if something is a file, create files, etc.

I should be able to ask questions about path strings, like the following:

• Is the path valid, if it did exist?
• What is the depth of the path?

I should be able to manipulate paths as a whole:

• I should canonicalize a path (remove redundant ../ and ./)

I should be able to work with multiple paths:

• Does path A begin with path B?
• Does path A end with path B?
• Is path B contained with path A?
• Join path A and path B together.

Changelog

v0.5.0

• Rename replace to set
• Add replace command, which does not change paths when the component does not exist
• Windows and unix path support, independent of native OS
• Add is command which tests if paths are relative, absolute, windows, or unix
  • --print flag to print true/false instead of changing exit code
  • --any and --all flags for testing multiple paths
• Add has command for checking if a path component exists

v0.4.0

• Remove --remove and --replace args with delete and replace commands
• Add get command (default behavior)
• Components are now arguments to get, delete, and replace
• Specify nth component by using number, 0 for first component, etc.
• Remove first component

v0.3.0

• Add first command
• Add --remove and --replace arguments for every command
• Remove rmext command

v0.2.0

• Show help by default
• Read from stdin, all at once
• Allow passing multiple file paths as args (not stdin)
• Add rmext command

v0.1.0

• Add ext, stem, prefix, name, parent commands.