Combine directory and file name in PHP ( equivalent of Path.Combine in .Net)

Question

This should be a simple question, but I just can't recall the relevant API. A search on google with the term "combine directory name php" doesn't yield any results . So I guess I am doing both myself and the programming community a service by asking this question. this is now the top entry returned by Google and DDG!

How to combine directory and file name to form a full file path in PHP? Let's say the directory name is "D:\setup program", and the file name is "mj.txt". The method should return me, on Windows "D:\setup program\mj.txt". Of course the method should return the correct file path in Linux or other OS.

The related function in .Net is Path.Combine, but in PHP, I couldn't recall that, even though I must have seen it before.

Answer 1

$filepath = $path . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $file; 

Although in newer versions of PHP it doesn't matter which way the slashes go, so it is fine to always use forward slashes.

You can get a correct absolute path using realpath(), this will also remove things like extra unnecessary slashes and resolve references like ../. It will return false if the path is not valid.

Answer 2

I think the most clean and flexible way to do it would be using the join function plus the DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR constant:

$fullPath = join(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, array($directoryPath, $fileName));