Perl does not have built-in functions to get the base name or dir name from a file path. But on the Unix platforms we can rely on the executables basename and dirname . #!/usr/bin/perl $f = '/A path with/space "/file... The quotes, escapes, and chomp are necessary: # This fails when there's a space in $f $base =...

Use basename to get the base name of a path. Use dirname to get the path excluding base name. For example: basename /export/home/user123/file1 # sends ...