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# dirname

(PHP 3, PHP 4 )

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.

See also: basename(), pathinfo(), and realpath().

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