NAME
dirname —
extract the directory portion of a
pathname
SYNOPSIS
#include
<libgen.h>
char *
dirname(char
*path);
DESCRIPTION
The
dirname()
function is the converse of
basename(3); it returns a pointer to the parent directory of the
pathname pointed to by path. Any trailing
‘/’ characters are not counted as part of the directory name.
If path is a null pointer, the empty string, or
contains no ‘/’ characters, dirname()
returns a pointer to the string ".", signifying the current
directory.
RETURN VALUES
On successful completion, dirname()
returns a pointer to the parent directory of path.
If dirname() fails, a null pointer is
returned and the global variable errno is set to
indicate the error.
ERRORS
The following error codes may be set in errno:
- [
ENAMETOOLONG] - The path component to be returned was larger than
PATH_MAX.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The dirname() function conforms to the
X/Open System Interfaces option of the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
(“POSIX.1”) specification.
HISTORY
The dirname() function first appeared in
OpenBSD 2.2.
AUTHORS
Todd C. Miller
CAVEATS
dirname() returns a pointer to internal
static storage space that will be overwritten by subsequent calls.
Other vendor implementations of dirname()
may modify the contents of the string passed to
dirname(); this should be taken into account when
writing code which calls this function if portability is desired.