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dirname(3) [php man page]

DIRNAME(3)								 1								DIRNAME(3)

dirname - Returns parent directory's path

SYNOPSIS
string dirname (string $path) DESCRIPTION
Given a string containing the path of a file or directory, this function will return the parent directory's path. PARAMETERS
o $path - A path. On Windows, both slash ( /) and backslash ( ) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash ( /). RETURN VALUES
Returns the path of the parent directory. If there are no slashes in $path, a dot (' .') is returned, indicating the current directory. Otherwise, the returned string is $path with any trailing /component removed. CHANGELOG
+--------+-------------------------------+ |Version | | | | | | | Description | | | | +--------+-------------------------------+ | 5.0.0 | | | | | | | dirname(3) is now binary safe | | | | +--------+-------------------------------+ EXAMPLES
Example #1 dirname(3) example <?php echo "1) " . dirname("/etc/passwd") . PHP_EOL; // 1) /etc echo "2) " . dirname("/etc/") . PHP_EOL; // 2) / (or on Windows) echo "3) " . dirname("."); // 3) . ?> NOTES
Note dirname(3) operates naively on the input string, and is not aware of the actual filesystem, or path components such as " ..". Note dirname(3) is locale aware, so for it to see the correct directory name with multibyte character paths, the matching locale must be set using the setlocale(3) function. Note Since PHP 4.3.0, you will often get a slash or a dot back from dirname(3) in situations where the older functionality would have given you the empty string. Check the following change example: <?php //before PHP 4.3.0 dirname('c:/'); // returned '.' //after PHP 4.3.0 dirname('c:/x'); // returns 'c:' dirname('c:/Temp/x'); // returns 'c:/Temp' dirname('/x'); // returns '' ?> SEE ALSO
basename(3), pathinfo(3), realpath(3). PHP Documentation Group DIRNAME(3)

Check Out this Related Man Page

dirname(3C)						   Standard C Library Functions 					       dirname(3C)

NAME
dirname - report the parent directory name of a file path name SYNOPSIS
#include <libgen.h> char *dirname(char *path); DESCRIPTION
The dirname() function takes a pointer to a character string that contains a pathname, and returns a pointer to a string that is a pathname of the parent directory of that file. Trailing '/' characters in the path are not counted as part of the path. If path does not contain a '/', then dirname() returns a pointer to the string "." . If path is a null pointer or points to an empty string, dirname() returns a pointer to the string "." . RETURN VALUES
The dirname() function returns a pointer to a string that is the parent directory of path. If path is a null pointer or points to an empty string, a pointer to a string "." is returned. ERRORS
No errors are defined. EXAMPLES
Example 1 Changing the Current Directory to the Parent Directory. The following code fragment reads a pathname, changes the current working directory to the parent directory of the named file (see chdir(2)), and opens the file. char path[[MAXPATHLEN], *pathcopy; int fd; fgets(path, MAXPATHLEN, stdin); pathcopy = strdup(path); chdir(dirname(pathcopy)); fd = open(basename(path), O_RDONLY); Example 2 Sample Input and Output Strings for dirname(). In the following table, the input string is the value pointed to by path, and the output string is the return value of the dirname() func- tion. +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | Input String | Output String | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |"/usr/lib"" |"/usr" | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |"/usr/" |"/" | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |"usr" |"/" | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |"/" |"/" | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |"." |"." | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |".." |"." | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ USAGE
The dirname() function modifies the string pointed to by path. The dirname() and basename(3C) functions together yield a complete pathname. The expression dirname(path) obtains the pathname of the directory where basename(path) is found. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Standard | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |MT-Level |MT-Safe | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
basename(1), chdir(2), basename(3C), attributes(5), standards(5) SunOS 5.11 18 Mar 2002 dirname(3C)
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