Returns a parent directory's path

Description

string dirname ( string $path [, int $levels = 1 ] )

Given a string containing the path of a file or directory, this function will return the parent directory's path that is levels up from the current 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 (/).

levels

The number of parent directories to go up.

This must be an integer greater than 0.

Return Values

Returns the path of a 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
7.0.0	Added the optional `levels` parameter.
5.0.0	dirname() is now binary safe

Examples

Example #1 dirname() example


<?php
echo dirname("/etc/passwd") . PHP_EOL;
echo dirname("/etc/") . PHP_EOL;
echo dirname(".") . PHP_EOL;
echo dirname("/usr/local/lib", 2);

The above example will output something similar to:

/etc
/ (or \ on Windows)
.
/usr

Notes

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 '\'

?>

dirname