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Top Forums Programming basename and dirname changes the value of argument??? Post 302336456 by Sapfeer on Wednesday 22nd of July 2009 07:47:21 AM
Old 07-22-2009
basename and dirname changes the value of argument???

Hi

I faced with some interesting behavior of basename and dirname functions from libgen.h: they changes the value of argument! Here is the declaration:
Code:
char  *basename(char *);
char  *dirname(char *);

It makes some tiresome to use them... I am new to C and maybe I do something wrong, but to make these functions work I have to create some temporary variables... Here is the code:
Code:
...
#include <libgen.h>
...
    char ef[PATH_MAX], eftmp[PATH_MAX], efbn[PATH_MAX] ... ;
...
    strcpy(eftmp, ef);
    strcpy(efbn, basename(eftmp));
...

In this example eftmp before basename() call doesn't equal to eftmp after! For me it looks a little bit strange...

If anyone share some experience on using them in more convenient fashion it will be great! Any comments also appreciated

Thanks in advance
 

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BASENAME(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 					       BASENAME(1)

NAME
basename, dirname -- return filename or directory portion of pathname SYNOPSIS
basename string [suffix] basename [-a] [-s suffix] string [...] dirname string DESCRIPTION
The basename utility deletes any prefix ending with the last slash '/' character present in string (after first stripping trailing slashes), and a suffix, if given. The suffix is not stripped if it is identical to the remaining characters in string. The resulting filename is written to the standard output. A non-existent suffix is ignored. If -a is specified, then every argument is treated as a string as if basename were invoked with just one argument. If -s is specified, then the suffix is taken as its argument, and all other arguments are treated as a string. The dirname utility deletes the filename portion, beginning with the last slash '/' character to the end of string (after first stripping trailing slashes), and writes the result to the standard output. EXAMPLES
The following line sets the shell variable FOO to /usr/bin. FOO=`dirname /usr/bin/trail` DIAGNOSTICS
The basename and dirname utilities exit 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. SEE ALSO
csh(1), sh(1) STANDARDS
The basename and dirname utilities are expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compatible. BSD
April 18, 1994 BSD
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