PHP: dirname function - Returns directory name component of path

Description

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

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
$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:


<?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 '\'

?>

dirname