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dirname(3c) [sunos 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 5.10 18 Mar 2002 dirname(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)
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