There are many ways to do this sort of thing. If your path is always known in a string then one simple approach is this

    my $path = "/dir1/dir2/dir3/ .. /dirn-1/dirLast//";
    my @pathary = split(/\//,$path);
    my $parentpath = join('/',@pathary[0..$#pathary-1]);
#    pop @path;                            # also
#    my $parentpath = join('/',@pathary);  # works
    print "$path\n$parentpath\n";
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An alternative, if the directory your are in is unknown or changes in an unpredictible manner, might be something like this. Note: This is rather inefficient but works.

    use Cwd;
    my $oldpath = getcwd();
    print "$oldpath\n";
    $path = '/var/tmpdir';
    chdir $path;
    $path = getcwd();  # for info only
    print "$path\n";   # for info only
    chdir "../";
    $path = getcwd();
    print "$path\n";
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