The
dirname ();
function
is the converse of
basename(3);
it returns a pointer to the parent directory of the pathname pointed to by
Fa path .
Any trailing
`/'
characters are not counted as part of the directory
name.
If
Fa path
is a null pointer, the empty string, or contains no
`/'
characters,
dirname ();
returns a pointer to the string
Qq . ,
signifying the current directory.
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
The
dirname ();
function
returns a pointer to internal storage space allocated on the first call
that will be overwritten
by subsequent calls.
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.
RETURN VALUES
On successful completion,
dirname ();
returns a pointer to the parent directory of
Fa 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
Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
The path component to be returned was larger than
MAXPATHLEN
