dirname, basename - Parse pathname components
SYNOPSIS
#include <libgen.h>
char *dirname(char *path);
char *basename(char *path);
DESCRIPTION
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 compo
nent 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 path
name.
Both dirname and basename may modify the contents of path,
so if you need to preserve the pathname string, copies
should be passed to these functions. Furthermore, dirname
and basename may return pointers to statically allocated
memory which may overwritten by subsequent calls.
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"
"/" "/" "/"
"." "." "."
".." "." ".."
EXAMPLE
char *dirc, *basec, *bname, *dname;
char *path = "/etc/passwd";
dirc = strdup(path);
basec = strdup(path);
dname = dirname(dirc);
bname = basename(basec);
free(dirc);
free(basec);
RETURN VALUE
Both dirname and basename return pointers to null-termi
nated strings.
BUGS
In versions of glibc up to and including 2.2.1, dirname
does not correctly handle pathnames with trailing '/'
characters, and generates a segmentation violation if
given a NULL argument.
CONFORMING TO
SUSv2
SEE ALSO
dirname(1), basename(1),
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