Filesystem Functions
simple but not said in the above examples
echo basename('somewhere.com/filename.php?id=2', '.php');
will output
filename.php?id=2
which is not the filename in case you expect!
basename
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
basename — Returns trailing name component of path
Description
string basename
( string
$path
[, string $suffix
] )Given a string containing the path to a file or directory, this function will return the trailing name component.
Parameters
-
path -
A path.
On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash (\) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash (/).
-
suffix -
If the name component ends in
suffixthis will also be cut off.
Return Values
Returns the base name of the given path.
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 4.1.0 |
The suffix parameter was added
|
Examples
Example #1 basename() example
<?php
echo "1) ".basename("/etc/sudoers.d", ".d").PHP_EOL;
echo "2) ".basename("/etc/passwd").PHP_EOL;
echo "3) ".basename("/etc/").PHP_EOL;
echo "4) ".basename(".").PHP_EOL;
echo "5) ".basename("/");
?>
The above example will output:
1) sudoers 2) passwd 3) etc 4) . 5)
Notes
Note:
basename() operates naively on the input string, and is not aware of the actual filesystem, or path components such as "..".
Note:
basename() is locale aware, so for it to see the correct basename with multibyte character paths, the matching locale must be set using the setlocale() function.
See Also
- dirname() - Returns parent directory's path
- pathinfo() - Returns information about a file path
add a note
User Contributed Notes
basename - [37 notes]
www.turigeza.com ¶
7 years ago
stephane dot fidanza at gmail dot com ¶
6 years ago
Support of the $suffix parameter has changed between PHP4 and PHP5:
in PHP4, $suffix is removed first, and then the core basename is applied.
conversely, in PHP5, $suffix is removed AFTER applying core basename.
Example:
<?php
$file = "path/to/file.xml#xpointer(/Texture)";
echo basename($file, ".xml#xpointer(/Texture)");
?>
Result in PHP4: file
Result in PHP5: Texture)
leaksin [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com ¶
5 months ago
This is a string function,too.
basename() does not check the current path for being exist or not.
It's great to use it for working with URL or search implement.
jonmsawyer at gmail dot com ¶
6 years ago
@antrik at users dot sf dot net
> 15-Nov-2004 10:40
> When using basename() on a path to a directory
> ('/bar/foo/'), the last path component ('foo') is returned,
> instead of the empty string one would expect. (Both PHP
> 4.1.2 and 4.3.8 on GNU/Linux.) No idea whether this is
> considered a bug or a feature -- I found it extremely
> annoying. Had to work around using: <?php
> $file=substr($path, -1)=='/'?'':basename($path)
> ?> Watch out!
There is a reason behind this -- and it has nothing to do with being a feature. PHP was heavily modeled off of the POSIX model. Many of the same functions you see in PHP are also in C, C++, and Java. These languages are modeled on POSIX as well.
The directory '/bar/foo/', when passed into the function basename(), will output 'foo' because *everything*, including directories, in the POSIX model, is a _file_. Most unix platforms, and all Windows platforms are (some Linux distributions are not) fully compliant to the POSIX model.
For example, the device file that contains information about your harddisk, in Linux, is probably stored in the _file_ /dev/hda.
Another example is that when you want to list information about your CPU or Memory using the Linux kernel, you might read the _file_ /proc/cpu/info.
Directories are no exception. Directories are no more different than your regular text file -- other than the fact that they describe a _file_-list of all files under it, and where the OS can access them. This means that even directories treat other directories as files.
The reason why we are made to think that directories are not files is because the kernel (the OS) simply treats these culprits differently. Your OS is lying to you! When you try to open up c:\windows in Notepad, you simply get a runaround because the Windows operating system knows it is a directory and knows how to treat it -- and knowing this it will not let you open it up for editing. For if you did that, you would probably lose the data in that directory. If you are familiar with C programming, you will know that if you lose information about a pointer to an object, the object gets lost in memory. The same would happen if you modified a directory in the wrong way. This is why the operating system protects its directories with the upmost care. (Some do anyway, hehe)
So when doing any kind of programming in PHP, C/++, Java, Ada, Perl, Python, Ruby, FORTRAN, and yes, even RPG IV (for all of you AS/400 folks out there working on the IFS), you must treat directories as files well.
This is why 'foo' is returned. For more information on POSIX, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX
I hope this helps. Cheers.
zandor_zz at yahoo dot it ¶
4 years ago
It might be useful to have a version of the function basename working with arrays too.
<?php
function a_basename( $file, $exts )
{
$onlyfilename = end( explode( "/", $file ) );
if( is_string( $exts ) )
{
if ( strpos( $onlyfilename, $exts, 0 ) !== false )
$onlyfilename = str_replace( $exts, "", $onlyfilename );
}
else if ( is_array( $exts ) )
{
// works with PHP version <= 5.x.x
foreach( $exts as $KEY => $ext )
{
$onlyfilename = str_replace( $ext, "", $onlyfilename );
}
}
return $onlyfilename ;
}
?>
swedish boy ¶
3 years ago
Here is a quick way of fetching only the filename (without extension) regardless of what suffix the file has.
<?php
// your file
$file = 'image.jpg';
$info = pathinfo($file);
$file_name = basename($file,'.'.$info['extension']);
echo $file_name; // outputs 'image'
?>
(remove) dot nasretdinov at (remove) dot gmail dot com ¶
4 years ago
There is only one variant that works in my case for my Russian UTF-8 letters:
<?php
function mb_basename($file)
{
return end(explode('/',$file));
}
><
It is intented for UNIX servers
adrian at foeder dot de ¶
5 years ago
On windows systems, filenames are case-insensitive. If you have to make sure the right case is used when you port your application to an unix system, you may use a combination of the following:
<?php
//assume the real filename is mytest.JPG:
$name_i_have = "mytest.jpg";
$realfilename = basename(realpath($name_i_have));
?>
basename itself does not check the filesystem for the given file, it does, so it seems, only string-manipulation.
With realpath() you can "extend" this functionality.
phdwight at yahoo dot com ¶
6 years ago
Pulled my hair out for this.
Just like most functions, this does not play well with Japanese characters.
When you call basename with some Japanese characters, it will return nothing (truncates it) .
Joel Franusic ¶
4 years ago
The results of the basename() function are dependent on your locale setting.
If basename() is returning blank results for strings with multibyte characters, you can try including the following in your script:
<?php
setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF8'); # or any other locale that can handle multibyte characters.
?>
However, the best solution to do this would be to change the locale setting on your system or webserver. For example, on Debian systems, this is done in /etc/init.d/apache
Anonymous ¶
6 years ago
lazy lester is just confirming what icewind said.
And yes it is correct! unlike what the following comment after icewind says, as that example is the same with the line order reversed! as poniestail at gmail dot com says.
But poniestail at gmail dot com missed the point that if the url is coming from a log file it will not have its value in $_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"] or $_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"] but in a LOG FILE or a DATABASE
Muhammad El-Saeed muhammad at elsaeed dot info ¶
1 month ago
to get the base url of my website
function url(){
$base_url = isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTPS']) !== 'off' ? 'https' : 'http';
$base_url .= '://'. $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$base_url .= str_replace(basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);
return $base_url;
}
hello at haroonahmad dot co dot uk ¶
4 years ago
I got a blank output from this code
$cur_dir = basename(dirname($_SERVER[PHP_SELF]))
suggested earlier by a friend here.
So anybody who wants to get the current directory path can use another technique that I use as
//suppose you're using this in pageitself.php page
$current_dir=dirname(realpath("pageitself.php"));
I hope it helps.
clothohk at gmail dot com ¶
5 years ago
Adding a space is not a solution to my Chinese UTF-8 characters. I guess it will not work for Japanese and Korean too.
I use this instead:
$filename = mb_substr($path, mb_strrpos($path, '/')+1);
thoughts at highermind dot org ¶
6 years ago
Basename without query string:
<?php
$filename = array_shift(explode('?', basename($url_path)));
?>
lazy lester ¶
7 years ago
If your path has a query string appended, and if the query string contains a "/" character, then the suggestions for extracting the filename offered below don't work.
For instance if the path is like this:
http://www.ex.com/getdat.php?dep=n/a&title=boss
Then both the php basename() function, and also
the $_SERVER[QUERY_STRING] variables get confused.
In such a case, use:
<php
$path_with_query="http://www.ex.com/getdat.php?dep=n/a&title=boss";
$path=explode("?",$path_with_query);
$filename=basename($path[0]);
$query=$path[1];
?>
Anonymous ¶
7 years ago
icewinds exmaple wouldn't work, the query part would contain the second char of the filename, not the query part of the url.
<?
$file = "path/file.php?var=foo";
$file = explode("?", basename($file));
$query = $file[1];
$file = $file[0];
?>
That works better.
crash at subsection dot org dot uk ¶
7 years ago
A simple way to return the current directory:
$cur_dir = basename(dirname($_SERVER[PHP_SELF]))
since basename always treats a path as a path to a file, e.g.
/var/www/site/foo/ indicates /var/www/site as the path to file
foo
pvollma at pcvsoftware dot net ¶
7 years ago
Note that in my example below, I used the stripslashes function on the target string first because I was dealing with the POST array $_FILES. When creating this array, PHP will add slashes to any slashes it finds in the string, so these must be stripped out first before processing the file path. Then again, the only reason I can think of that basename() would fail is when dealing with Windows paths on a *nix server -- and the file upload via POST is the only situation I can think of that would require this. Obviously, if you are not dealing with these additional slashes, invoking stripslashes() first would remove the very separators you need extract the file name from the full path.
amitabh at NOSPAM dot saysnetsoft dot com ¶
7 years ago
The previous example posted by "pvollma" didn't work out for me, so I modified it slightly:
<?php
function GetFileName($file_name)
{
$newfile = basename($file_name);
if (strpos($newfile,'\\') !== false)
{
$tmp = preg_split("[\\\]",$newfile);
$newfile = $tmp[count($tmp) - 1];
return($newfile);
}
else
{
return($file_name);
}
}
?>
pvollma at pcvsoftware dot net ¶
7 years ago
There is a real problem when using this function on *nix servers, since it does not handle Windows paths (using the \ as a separator). Why would this be an issue on *nix servers? What if you need to handle file uploads from MS IE? In fact, the manual section "Handling file uploads" uses basename() in an example, but this will NOT extract the file name from a Windows path such as C:\My Documents\My Name\filename.ext. After much frustrated coding, here is how I handled it (might not be the best, but it works):
<?php
$filen = stripslashes($_FILES['userfile']['name']);
$newfile = basename($filen);
if (strpos($newfile,'\\') !== false) {
$tmp = preg_split("[\\\]",$newfile);
$newfile = $tmp[count($tmp) - 1];
}
?>
$newfile will now contain only the file name and extension, even if the POSTed file name included a full Windows path.
KOmaSHOOTER at gmx dot de ¶
8 years ago
if you want the name of the parent directory
<?php
$_parenDir_path = join(array_slice(split( "/" ,dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])),0,-1),"/").'/'; // returns the full path to the parent dir
$_parenDir = basename ($_parenDir_path,"/"); // returns only the name of the parent dir
// or
$_parenDir2 = array_pop(array_slice(split( "/" ,dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])),0,-1)); // returns also only the name of the parent dir
echo('$_parenDir_path = '.$_parenDir_path.'<br>');
echo('$_parenDir = '.$_parenDir.'<br>');
echo('$_parenDir2 = '.$_parenDir2.'<br>');
?>
KOmaSHOOTER at gmx dot de ¶
8 years ago
If you want the current path where youre file is and not the full path then use this :)
<?php
echo('dir = '.basename (dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']),"/"));
// retuns the name of current used directory
?>
Example:
www dir: domain.com/temp/2005/january/t1.php
<?php
echo('dirname <br>'.dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']).'<br><br>');
// returns: /temp/2005/january
?>
<?php
echo('file = '.basename ($PHP_SELF,".php"));
// returns: t1
?>
if you combine these two you get this
<?php
echo('dir = '.basename (dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']),"/"));
// returns: january
?>
And for the full path use this
<?php
echo(' PHP_SELF <br>'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'<br><br>');
// returns: /temp/2005/january/t1.php
?>
KOmaSHOOTER at gmx dot de ¶
9 years ago
Exmaple for exploding ;) the filename to an array
<?php
echo(basename ($PHP_SELF)."<br>"); // returnes filename.php
$file = basename ($PHP_SELF);
$file = explode(".",$file);
print_r($file); // returnes Array ( [0] => filename [1] => php )
echo("<br>");
$filename = basename(strval($file[0]),$file[1]);
echo($filename."<br>"); // returnes filename
echo(basename ($PHP_SELF,".php")."<br>"); // returnes filename
echo("<br>");
echo("<br>");
//show_source(basename ($PHP_SELF,".php").".php")
show_source($file[0].".".$file[1])
?>
giovanni at giacobbi dot net ¶
9 years ago
No comments here seems to take care about UNIX system files, which typically start with a dot, but they are not "extensions-only".
The following function should work with every file path. If not, please let me know at my email address.
<?php
function remove_ext($str) {
$noext = preg_replace('/(.+)\..*$/', '$1', $str);
print "input: $str\n";
print "output: $noext\n\n";
}
remove_ext("/home/joh.nny/test.php");
remove_ext("home/johnny/test.php");
remove_ext("weirdfile.");
remove_ext(".hiddenfile");
remove_ext("../johnny.conf");
daijoubu_NOSP at M_videotron dot ca ¶
9 years ago
An faster alternative to:
<?php
array_pop(explode('.', $fpath));
?>
would be:
<?php
substr($fpath, strrpos($fpath, '.')); // returns the dot
?>
If you don't want the dot, simply adds 1 to the position
<?php
substr($fpath, strrpos($fpath, '.') + 1); // returns the ext only
?>
argonaise nospam snu.ac.kr ¶
9 months ago
if basename() causes problem with utf-8 strings, try $str = ltrim(basename(' '.$str)); it's a simple trick, but surely helps!
noemail at nosite dot com ¶
3 years ago
you could use this function when you need basename to work with cyrillic filenames
<?php
function pcgbasename($param, $suffix=null) {
if ( $suffix ) {
$tmpstr = ltrim(substr($param, strrpos($param, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) ), DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
if ( (strpos($param, $suffix)+strlen($suffix) ) == strlen($param) ) {
return str_ireplace( $suffix, '', $tmpstr);
} else {
return ltrim(substr($param, strrpos($param, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) ), DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
}
} else {
return ltrim(substr($param, strrpos($param, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) ), DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
}
}
?>
poniestail at gmail dot com ¶
7 years ago
examples from "icewind" and "basname" seem highly overdone... not to mention example from "basename" is exactly the same as one from "icewind"...
possibly a more logical approach?
<?
//possible URL = http://domain.com/path/to/file.php?var=foo
$filename = substr( $_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"], 1 ); //substr( ) used for optional removal of initial "/"
$query = $_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"];
?>
to see the entire $_SERVER variable try this:
<?
echo "<pre>
".print_r( $_SERVER, true )."
</pre>
";
?>
b_r_i_a__n at locallinux dot com ¶
7 years ago
I was looking for a way to get only the filename whether or not I had received the full path to it from the user. I came up with a much simpler (and probably more robust) method by using the power of basename in reverse:
$infile = "/usr/bin/php";
$filename = stristr ($infile,basename ($infile));
This even works on those _wacky_ filenames like "/usr/lib/libnetsnmp.so.5.0.9" which are not factored when exploding the full path and taking out only the last segment after "."
antrik at users dot sf dot net ¶
8 years ago
When using basename() on a path to a directory ('/bar/foo/'), the last path component ('foo') is returned, instead of the empty string one would expect. (Both PHP 4.1.2 and 4.3.8 on GNU/Linux.) No idea whether this is considered a bug or a feature -- I found it extremely annoying. Had to work around using: <?php $file=substr($path, -1)=='/'?'':basename($path) ?> Watch out!
osanim at cidlisuis dot org ¶
9 years ago
If you want know the real directory of the include file, you have to writte:
<?php
dirname(__FILE__)
?>
tamar at atarplpl dot co dot il ¶
1 year ago
If you have problem with this function and UTF8 charset, you only have to upgrade php version to 5.2 or higher
pai dot ravi at yahoo dot com ¶
4 years ago
once you have extracted the basename from the full path and want to separate the extension from the file name, the following function will do it efficiently:
<?php
function splitFilename($filename)
{
$pos = strrpos($filename, '.');
if ($pos === false)
{ // dot is not found in the filename
return array($filename, ''); // no extension
}
else
{
$basename = substr($filename, 0, $pos);
$extension = substr($filename, $pos+1);
return array($basename, $extension);
}
}
?>
thovan at gmx dot net ¶
6 years ago
After reading all of the earlier comments, I made my own function file_basename():
<?php
function file_basename($file= null) {
if($file=== null || strlen($file)<= 0) {
return null;
}
$file= explode('?', $file);
$file= explode('/', $file[0]);
$basename= $file[count($file)-1];
return $basename;
}
?>
icewind ¶
7 years ago
Because of filename() gets "file.php?var=foo", i use explode in addition to basename like here:
$file = "path/file.php?var=foo";
$file = explode("?", basename($file));
$file = $file[0];
$query = $file[1];
Now $file only contains "file.php" and $query contains the query-string (in this case "var=foo").
info at smaartweb dot com ¶
4 years ago
here are two good functions to extract the filename and extension part from any given path or url.
<?php
function ShowFileExtension($filepath)
{
preg_match('/[^?]*/', $filepath, $matches);
$string = $matches[0];
$pattern = preg_split('/\./', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
# check if there is any extension
if(count($pattern) == 1)
{
echo 'No File Extension Present';
exit;
}
if(count($pattern) > 1)
{
$filenamepart = $pattern[count($pattern)-1][0];
preg_match('/[^?]*/', $filenamepart, $matches);
echo $matches[0];
}
}
function ShowFileName($filepath)
{
preg_match('/[^?]*/', $filepath, $matches);
$string = $matches[0];
#split the string by the literal dot in the filename
$pattern = preg_split('/\./', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
#get the last dot position
$lastdot = $pattern[count($pattern)-1][1];
#now extract the filename using the basename function
$filename = basename(substr($string, 0, $lastdot-1));
#return the filename part
return $filename;
}
?>
usage
<?php
//$string = 'C:\My Documents\My Name\filename.ext';
//$string = 'http://php.net/manual/add-note.php?
&redirect=http://php.net/function.basename.php';
echo ShowFileName($string);
echo ShowFileExtension($string);
?>