PHP Reference

Description

string dirname ( string path)

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

On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash (\) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash (/).

Example 1. dirname() example

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

Note: In PHP 4.0.3, dirname() was fixed to be POSIX-compliant. Essentially, this means that 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. Note that this means that 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.

dirname() has changed its behaviour in PHP 4.3.0. Check the following examples:


<?php



//before PHP 4.3.0

dirname('c:/'); // returned '.'



//after PHP 4.3.0

dirname('c:/'); // returns 'c:'



?>