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dirname

Returns directory name component of path (PHP 4, PHP 5)
string dirname ( string path )

Given a string containing a path to a file, this function will return the name of the directory.

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 name of the 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

VersionDescription
5.0.0 dirname() is now binary safe
4.0.3 dirname() was fixed to be POSIX-compliant.

Examples

Example 621. dirname() example

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<?php
$path = "/etc/passwd";
$file = dirname($path); // $file is set to "/etc"
?>


Notes

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:

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<?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()
pathinfo()
realpath()


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