How could I retrieve the current working directory/folder name in a bash script, or even better, just a terminal command.
pwd gives the full path of the current working directory, e.g. /opt/local/bin but I only want bin.
No need for basename, and especially no need for a subshell running pwd (which adds an extra, and expensive, fork operation); the shell can do this internally using parameter expansion:
result=${PWD##*/} # to assign to a variable
result=${result:-/} # to correct for the case where PWD is / (root)
printf '%s\n' "${PWD##*/}" # to print to stdout
# ...more robust than echo for unusual names
# (consider a directory named -e or -n)
printf '%q\n' "${PWD##*/}" # to print to stdout, quoted for use as shell input
# ...useful to make hidden characters readable.
Note that if you're applying this technique in other circumstances (not PWD, but some other variable holding a directory name), you might need to trim any trailing slashes. The below uses bash's extglob support to work even with multiple trailing slashes:
dirname=/path/to/somewhere//
shopt -s extglob # enable +(...) glob syntax
result=${dirname%%+(/)} # trim however many trailing slashes exist
result=${result##*/} # remove everything before the last / that still remains
result=${result:-/} # correct for dirname=/ case
printf '%s\n' "$result"
Alternatively, without extglob:
dirname="/path/to/somewhere//"
result="${dirname%"${dirname##*[!/]}"}" # extglob-free multi-trailing-/ trim
result="${result##*/}" # remove everything before the last /
result=${result:-/} # correct for dirname=/ case