dirname -- 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.
On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash
(\) are used as path separator character. In
other environments, it is the forward slash
(/).
Example 1. dirname() example
$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.
