我把你的问题作为一个挑战，用“可移植的”shell代码来编写它，即。

考虑到POSIX外壳 没有数组之类的bashisms 避免像打瘟疫一样打外部电话。脚本中没有一个分叉!这使得它非常快，特别是在有显著分叉开销的系统上，比如cygwin。 必须处理路径名中的glob字符(*，?，[，])

它运行在任何POSIX兼容shell (zsh, bash, ksh, ash, busybox，…)上。它甚至包含一个测试套件来验证其操作。路径名的规范化留作练习。: -)

#!/bin/sh

# Find common parent directory path for a pair of paths.
# Call with two pathnames as args, e.g.
# commondirpart foo/bar foo/baz/bat -> result="foo/"
# The result is either empty or ends with "/".
commondirpart () {
   result=""
   while test ${#1} -gt 0 -a ${#2} -gt 0; do
      if test "${1%${1#?}}" != "${2%${2#?}}"; then   # First characters the same?
         break                                       # No, we're done comparing.
      fi
      result="$result${1%${1#?}}"                    # Yes, append to result.
      set -- "${1#?}" "${2#?}"                       # Chop first char off both strings.
   done
   case "$result" in
   (""|*/) ;;
   (*)     result="${result%/*}/";;
   esac
}

# Turn foo/bar/baz into ../../..
#
dir2dotdot () {
   OLDIFS="$IFS" IFS="/" result=""
   for dir in $1; do
      result="$result../"
   done
   result="${result%/}"
   IFS="$OLDIFS"
}

# Call with FROM TO args.
relativepath () {
   case "$1" in
   (*//*|*/./*|*/../*|*?/|*/.|*/..)
      printf '%s\n' "'$1' not canonical"; exit 1;;
   (/*)
      from="${1#?}";;
   (*)
      printf '%s\n' "'$1' not absolute"; exit 1;;
   esac
   case "$2" in
   (*//*|*/./*|*/../*|*?/|*/.|*/..)
      printf '%s\n' "'$2' not canonical"; exit 1;;
   (/*)
      to="${2#?}";;
   (*)
      printf '%s\n' "'$2' not absolute"; exit 1;;
   esac

   case "$to" in
   ("$from")   # Identical directories.
      result=".";;
   ("$from"/*) # From /x to /x/foo/bar -> foo/bar
      result="${to##$from/}";;
   ("")        # From /foo/bar to / -> ../..
      dir2dotdot "$from";;
   (*)
      case "$from" in
      ("$to"/*)       # From /x/foo/bar to /x -> ../..
         dir2dotdot "${from##$to/}";;
      (*)             # Everything else.
         commondirpart "$from" "$to"
         common="$result"
         dir2dotdot "${from#$common}"
         result="$result/${to#$common}"
      esac
      ;;
   esac
}

set -f # noglob

set -x
cat <<EOF |
/ / .
/- /- .
/? /? .
/?? /?? .
/??? /??? .
/?* /?* .
/* /* .
/* /** ../**
/* /*** ../***
/*.* /*.** ../*.**
/*.??? /*.?? ../*.??
/[] /[] .
/[a-z]* /[0-9]* ../[0-9]*
/foo /foo .
/foo / ..
/foo/bar / ../..
/foo/bar /foo ..
/foo/bar /foo/baz ../baz
/foo/bar /bar/foo  ../../bar/foo
/foo/bar/baz /gnarf/blurfl/blubb ../../../gnarf/blurfl/blubb
/foo/bar/baz /gnarf ../../../gnarf
/foo/bar/baz /foo/baz ../../baz
/foo. /bar. ../bar.
EOF
while read FROM TO VIA; do
   relativepath "$FROM" "$TO"
   printf '%s\n' "FROM: $FROM" "TO:   $TO" "VIA:  $result"
   if test "$result" != "$VIA"; then
      printf '%s\n' "OOOPS! Expected '$VIA' but got '$result'"
   fi
done

# vi: set tabstop=3 shiftwidth=3 expandtab fileformat=unix :

$ python -c "import os.path; print os.path.relpath('/foo/bar', '/foo/baz/foo')"

给:

../../bar

使用GNU coreutils 8.23中的realpath是最简单的，我认为:

$ realpath --relative-to="$file1" "$file2"

例如:

$ realpath --relative-to=/usr/bin/nmap /tmp/testing
../../../tmp/testing

我将只使用Perl来完成这个不那么简单的任务:

absolute="/foo/bar"
current="/foo/baz/foo"

# Perl is magic
relative=$(perl -MFile::Spec -e 'print File::Spec->abs2rel("'$absolute'","'$current'")')

这个答案并没有解决问题的Bash部分，但是因为我试图使用这个问题中的答案在Emacs中实现这个功能，所以我就把它扔到那里。

Emacs实际上有一个开箱即用的函数:

ELISP> (file-relative-name "/a/b/c" "/a/b/c")
"."
ELISP> (file-relative-name "/a/b/c" "/a/b")
"c"
ELISP> (file-relative-name "/a/b/c" "/c/b")
"../../a/b/c"

自2001年以来，它被内置到Perl中，因此它几乎可以在您能想象到的所有系统上工作，甚至VMS。

perl -le 'use File::Spec; print File::Spec->abs2rel(@ARGV)' FILE BASE

而且，解决方案很容易理解。

举个例子:

perl -le 'use File::Spec; print File::Spec->abs2rel(@ARGV)' $absolute $current

.．.会很好。