DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

DIRNAME(3)            DragonFly Library Functions Manual            DIRNAME(3)

NAME
     dirname - extract the directory part of a pathname

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

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
                        MAXPATHLEN.

WARNINGS
     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.

SEE ALSO
     basename(1), dirname(1), basename(3)

STANDARDS
     The dirname() function conforms to X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4,
     Version 2 ("XPG4.2").

HISTORY
     The dirname() function first appeared in OpenBSD 2.2 and FreeBSD 4.2.

AUTHORS
     Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>

DragonFly 5.7-DEVELOPMENT       January 4, 2020      DragonFly 5.7-DEVELOPMENT