dirname
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
dirname — Returns parent directory's path
Description
Given a string containing the path of a file or directory, this function will return the parent directory's path.
Parameters
- 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() is now binary safe |
| 4.0.3 | dirname() was fixed to be POSIX-compliant. |
Examples
Example #1 dirname() example
<?php
echo "1) ".dirname("/etc/passwd").PHP_EOL;
echo "2) ".dirname("/etc/").PHP_EOL;
echo "3) ".dirname(".");
?>
The above example will output:
1) /etc 2) / 3) .
Notes
Note:
dirname() operates naively on the input string, and is not aware of the actual filesystem, or path components such as "..".
Note:
dirname() 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() function.
Note:
Since PHP 4.3.0, you will often get a slash or a dot back from dirname() 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() - Returns trailing name component of path
- pathinfo() - Returns information about a file path
- realpath() - Returns canonicalized absolute pathname