DIRNAME(3) | Library Functions Manual | DIRNAME(3) |
dirname
— extract
the directory part of a pathname
#include
<libgen.h>
char *
dirname
(char *path);
char *
dirname_r
(const char *path,
char *dname);
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.
The dirname
() function returns a pointer
to internal storage space allocated on the first call that will be
overwritten by subsequent calls. dirname_r
() is
therefore preferred for threaded applications.
Other vendor implementations of dirname
()
may modify the contents of the string passed to
dirname
(); if portability is desired, this should be
taken into account when writing code which calls this function.
#include
<libgen.h>
char *
dirname
(const
char *path);;
In legacy mode, path will not be changed.
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.
The following error codes may be set in errno:
ENAMETOOLONG
]MAXPATHLEN
.ENOMEM
]dirname
() could not be allocated.The dirname
() function conforms to
X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4, Version 2
(“XPG4.2”).
The dirname
() function first appeared in
OpenBSD 2.2 and FreeBSD 4.2.
The dirname_r
() function first appeared in OS X
10.12.
Todd C. Miller
October 12, 2006 | macOS 14.6 |