Extract the last directory of a pwd output

Using awk:

pwd | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'

Should work for you: pwd | rev | cut -f1 -d'/' - | rev

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31728689/663058

Are you looking for basename or dirname?

Something like

basename "`pwd`"

should be what you want to know.

If you insist on using sed, you could also use

pwd | sed 's#.*/##'

If you want to do it completely within a bash script without running any external binaries, ${PWD##*/} should work.