How can I remove the extension of a filename in a shell script?

You can also use parameter expansion:

$ filename=foo.txt
$ echo "${filename%.*}"
foo

Just be aware that if there is no file extension, it will look further back for dots, e.g.

• If the filename only starts with a dot (e.g. .bashrc) it will remove the whole filename.
• If there's a dot only in the path (e.g. path.to/myfile or ./myfile), then it will trim inside the path.

If you know the extension, you can use basename

$ basename /home/jsmith/base.wiki .wiki
base

You should be using the command substitution syntax $(command) when you want to execute a command in script/command.

So your line would be

name=$(echo "$filename" | cut -f 1 -d '.')

Code explanation:

1. echo get the value of the variable $filename and send it to standard output
2. We then grab the output and pipe it to the cut command
3. The cut will use the . as delimiter (also known as separator) for cutting the string into segments and by -f we select which segment we want to have in output
4. Then the $() command substitution will get the output and return its value
5. The returned value will be assigned to the variable named name

Note that this gives the portion of the variable up to the first period .:

$ filename=hello.world
$ echo "$filename" | cut -f 1 -d '.'
hello
$ filename=hello.hello.hello
$ echo "$filename" | cut -f 1 -d '.'
hello
$ filename=hello
$ echo "$filename" | cut -f 1 -d '.'
hello