kasku和Pini的答案略有改进，空格更好，允许传递相对路径:

#!/bin/bash
# both $1 and $2 are paths
# returns $2 relative to $1
absolute=`readlink -f "$2"`
current=`readlink -f "$1"`
# Perl is magic
# Quoting horror.... spaces cause problems, that's why we need the extra " in here:
relative=$(perl -MFile::Spec -e "print File::Spec->abs2rel(q($absolute),q($current))")

echo $relative

test.sh:

#!/bin/bash                                                                 

cd /home/ubuntu
touch blah
TEST=/home/ubuntu/.//blah
echo TEST=$TEST
TMP=$(readlink -e "$TEST")
echo TMP=$TMP
REL=${TMP#$(pwd)/}
echo REL=$REL

测试:

$ ./test.sh 
TEST=/home/ubuntu/.//blah
TMP=/home/ubuntu/blah
REL=blah

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'")')

这是对@pini目前评分最高的解决方案(遗憾的是，它只处理少数情况)的更正，全功能改进

提醒:'-z'测试如果字符串是零长度(=空)，'-n'测试如果字符串不是空。

# both $1 and $2 are absolute paths beginning with /
# returns relative path to $2/$target from $1/$source
source=$1
target=$2

common_part=$source # for now
result="" # for now

while [[ "${target#$common_part}" == "${target}" ]]; do
    # no match, means that candidate common part is not correct
    # go up one level (reduce common part)
    common_part="$(dirname $common_part)"
    # and record that we went back, with correct / handling
    if [[ -z $result ]]; then
        result=".."
    else
        result="../$result"
    fi
done

if [[ $common_part == "/" ]]; then
    # special case for root (no common path)
    result="$result/"
fi

# since we now have identified the common part,
# compute the non-common part
forward_part="${target#$common_part}"

# and now stick all parts together
if [[ -n $result ]] && [[ -n $forward_part ]]; then
    result="$result$forward_part"
elif [[ -n $forward_part ]]; then
    # extra slash removal
    result="${forward_part:1}"
fi

echo $result

测试用例:

compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A"           -->  "../.."
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/B"         -->  ".."
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/B/C"       -->  ""
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/B/C/D"     -->  "D"
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/B/C/D/E"   -->  "D/E"
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/B/D"       -->  "../D"
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/B/D/E"     -->  "../D/E"
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/D"         -->  "../../D"
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/A/D/E"       -->  "../../D/E"
compute_relative.sh "/A/B/C" "/D/E/F"       -->  "../../../D/E/F"

这里的答案并不是每天都能用的。由于在纯bash中很难正确地做到这一点，我建议以下可靠的解决方案(类似于注释中的一个建议):

function relpath() { 
  python -c "import os,sys;print(os.path.relpath(*(sys.argv[1:])))" "$@";
}

然后，你可以得到基于当前目录的相对路径:

echo $(relpath somepath)

或者你可以指定路径相对于给定的目录:

echo $(relpath somepath /etc)  # relative to /etc

一个缺点是这需要python，但是:

它在任何python >= 2.6中工作相同 它不要求文件或目录存在。 文件名可以包含更广泛的特殊字符。 例如，如果文件名包含 空格或其他特殊字符。 它是一个单行函数，不会使脚本混乱。

注意，包含basename或dirname的解决方案不一定更好，因为它们要求安装coreutils。如果有人有可靠而简单的纯bash解决方案(而不是令人费解的好奇心)，我会感到惊讶。

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