basename, dirname - parse pathname components
#include <libgen.h>
char *dirname(char *path);
char *basename(char *path);
Warning: there are two different functions basename(); see below.
The functions dirname() and basename() break a null-terminated pathname string into directory and filename components. In the usual case, dirname() returns the string up to, but not including, the final '/', and basename() returns the component following the final '/'. Trailing '/' characters are not counted as part of the pathname.
If path
does not contain a slash, dirname()
returns the string "." while basename() returns a copy
of path
. If path
is the string "/", then both
dirname() and basename() return the
string "/". If path
is a null pointer or points to an empty
string, then both dirname() and
basename() return the string ".".
Concatenating the string returned by dirname(), a "/", and the string returned by basename() yields a complete pathname.
Both dirname() and basename() may
modify the contents of path
, so it may be desirable to pass a
copy when calling one of these functions.
These functions may return pointers to statically allocated memory
which may be overwritten by subsequent calls. Alternatively, they may
return a pointer to some part of path
, so that the string
referred to by path
should not be modified or freed until the
pointer returned by the function is no longer required.
The following list of examples (taken from SUSv2) shows the strings returned by dirname() and basename() for different paths:
path dirname basename /usr/lib /usr lib /usr/ / usr usr . usr / / / . . . .. . ..