dirname in PHP

dirname — Returns parent directory's path
Syntax:

string dirname ( string $path )
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


Example #1 dirname() example

<?php
echo "1) " . dirname("/etc/passwd") . PHP_EOL; // 1) /etc
echo "2) " . dirname("/etc/") . PHP_EOL; // 2) / (or \ on Windows)
echo "3) " . dirname("."); // 3) .
?>


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 '\'

?>