basename(3C) Standard C Library Functions basename(3C)NAME
basename - return the last element of a path name
SYNOPSIS
#include <libgen.h>
char *basename(char *path);
DESCRIPTION
The basename() function takes the pathname pointed to by path and returns a pointer to the final component of the pathname, deleting any
trailing '/' characters.
If the string consists entirely of the '/' character, basename() returns a pointer to the string "/" .
If path is a null pointer or points to an empty string, basename() returns a pointer to the string "." .
RETURN VALUES
The basename() function returns a pointer to the final component of path.
USAGE
The basename() function may modify the string pointed to by path, and may return a pointer to static storage that may then be overwritten
by a subsequent call to basename().
When compiling multithreaded applications, the _REENTRANT flag must be defined on the compile line. This flag should only be used in mul-
tithreaded applications.
EXAMPLES
Example 1 Examples for Input String and Output String
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Input String | Output String |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|"/usr/lib" |"lib" |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|"/usr/" |"usr" |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|"/" |"/" |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
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), dirname(3C), attributes(5), standards(5)SunOS 5.11 24 Jul 2002 basename(3C)
Check Out this Related Man Page
DIRNAME(3) Linux Programmer's Manual DIRNAME(3)NAME
dirname, basename - Parse pathname components
SYNOPSIS
#include <libgen.h>
char *dirname(char *path);
char *basename(char *path);
DESCRIPTION
The functions dirname and basename break a null-terminated pathname string into directory and filename components. In the usual case,
dirname returns the string up to, but not including, the final '/', and basename returns the component following the final '/'. Trailing
'/' characters are not counted as part of the pathname.
If path does not contain a slash, dirname returns the string "." while basename returns a copy of path. If path is the string "/", then
both dirname and basename return the string "/". If path is a NULL pointer or points to an empty string, then both dirname and basename
return the string ".".
Concatenating the string returned by dirname, a "/", and the string returned by basename yields a complete pathname.
Both dirname and basename may modify the contents of path, so if you need to preserve the pathname string, copies should be passed to these
functions. Furthermore, dirname and basename may return pointers to statically allocated memory which may be overwritten by subsequent
calls.
The following list of examples (taken from SUSv2) shows the strings returned by dirname and basename for different paths:
path dirname basename
"/usr/lib" "/usr" "lib"
"/usr/" "/" "usr"
"usr" "." "usr"
"/" "/" "/"
"." "." "."
".." "." ".."
EXAMPLE
char *dirc, *basec, *bname, *dname;
char *path = "/etc/passwd";
dirc = strdup(path);
basec = strdup(path);
dname = dirname(dirc);
bname = basename(basec);
printf("dirname=%s, basename=%s
", dname, bname);
free(dirc);
free(basec);
RETURN VALUE
Both dirname and basename return pointers to null-terminated strings.
BUGS
In versions of glibc up to and including 2.2.1, dirname does not correctly handle pathnames with trailing '/' characters, and generates a
segmentation violation if given a NULL argument.
CONFORMING TO
SUSv2
SEE ALSO dirname(1), basename(1),
GNU 2000-12-14 DIRNAME(3)