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
$newfile = basename($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.