PHP dirname() (original) (raw)

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the PHP dirname() function to get the parent directory’s path of a file or directory path.

Introduction to the PHP dirname() function #

The dirname() function accepts a path and returns a parent directory’s path:

dirname ( string <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mi>p</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>h</mi><mo separator="true">,</mo><mi>i</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>t</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">path , int </annotation></semantics></math>path,intlevels = 1 ) : stringCode language: PHP (php)

The dirname() function has two parameters:

$path is the file or directory path in which you want to get the parent’s directory path.
$levels is the number of parent directories to go up. The $levels must be an integer that is greater than zero.

The dirname() returns the parent directory’s path that is $levels up from the current directory.

Note that you can use both slash (/) and backslash (\) as the directory separator character on Windows and the forward-slash (/) on other environments such as Linux and macOS.

PHP dirname() function example #

The following example uses the dirname() function to get the parent directory’s path:

`<?php

echo '1.' , dirname("/htdocs/public") , PHP_EOL; echo '2.' , dirname("/htdocs/") , PHP_EOL; echo '3.' , dirname(".") , PHP_EOL; echo '4.' , dirname("C:\") , PHP_EOL; echo '5.' , dirname("/htdocs/public/css/dev", 2);`Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Output:

1./htdocs 2.\ 3.. 4.C:\ 5./htdocs/publicCode language: plaintext (plaintext)

Summary #

Use the PHP dirname() function to get the parent directory’s path of a file or directory path.

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