Copyright (c) 1997 Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
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OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
$FreeBSD$
.Dd July 29, 2016 .Dt DIRNAME 3 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm dirname .Nd extract the directory part of a pathname .Sh SYNOPSIS n libgen.h .Ft char * .Fn dirname "const char *path" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fn dirname function is the converse of .Xr basename 3 ; it returns a pointer to the parent directory of the pathname pointed to by .Fa path . Any trailing .Sq / characters are not counted as part of the directory name. If .Fa path is a null pointer, the empty string, or contains no .Sq / characters, .Fn dirname returns a pointer to the string .Qq . , signifying the current directory. .Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES The .Fn dirname function returns a pointer to internal storage space allocated on the first call that will be overwritten by subsequent calls.
p Other vendor implementations of .Fn dirname may store their result in the input buffer, making it safe to use in multithreaded applications. Future versions of .Fx will follow this approach as well. .Sh RETURN VALUES On successful completion, .Fn dirname returns a pointer to the parent directory of .Fa path .
p If .Fn dirname fails, a null pointer is returned and the global variable .Va errno is set to indicate the error. .Sh ERRORS The following error codes may be set in .Va errno : l -tag -width Er t Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG The path component to be returned was larger than .Dv MAXPATHLEN . .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr basename 1 , .Xr dirname 1 , .Xr basename 3 .Sh STANDARDS The .Fn dirname function conforms to .St -xpg4.2 . .Sh HISTORY The .Fn dirname function first appeared in .Ox 2.2 and .Fx 4.2 . .Sh AUTHORS .An "Todd C. Miller"