I have a script I'm trying to make portable. It always runs in a dir called scripts, under a project name which can be any depth. What I need is the project name itself.

Examples:
/top/sub1/sub2/sub3/foo/scripts : I want just "foo"
/another/bar/scripts : I want just "bar"

I have used this
project=$(echo `pwd` | gawk `BEGIN (FS ="[ \t]*|[/]") {print $5}')
which worked but only when the path was a fixed depth (the $5).

Actually, all I'm really trying to do is return the parent folder name to a variable, so if theres a smarter way than GAWK I'm all for it.. Cheers.

You can use the NF (number of fields) option:

project=$(pwd | gawk -F"/" ' { x = --NF } { print $x }')

Hope this helps.

What about that:
project=$(pwd | sed -n 's|^.*/\([^/]*\)/[^/]*$|\1|p')

Of course, if the working-dir of the script is not .../script, but the script file actually is there, then you have to append
cd "$(dirname "$0")" &&
just in front of pwd.

Yves.