Citing the manual here:
The functions dirname() and basename() break a null-terminated pathname string into directory and filename components. In the usual case, dirname() returns the string up to, but not including, the final '/', and basename() returns the component following the final '/'. Trailing '/' characters are not counted as part of the pathname.
And later on, you have this little table:
path dirname basename
"/usr/lib" "/usr" "lib"
"/usr/" "/" "usr" // wat?
"usr" "." "usr"
"/" "/" "/"
"." "." "."
".." "." ".."
Why is dirname( "/usr/")
returning "/"
and not "/usr"
?
The sentence in the manual tells me I should get /usr
as a result.
I tested the actual result in a dummy program and it behaves just like the manual says.
#include <libgen.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(int argc, char const *argv[])
{
const char *mydir="/usr/";
char *dummy = strdup( mydir );
char *dummy2 = strdup( mydir );
char *dname = dirname( dummy );
char *bname = basename( dummy2 );
printf("mydir: '%s', dname: '%s', bname: '%s'\n", mydir, dname, bname);
free( dummy );
free( dummy2 );
return 0;
}
$ ./test
mydir: '/usr/', dname: '/', bname: 'usr'
Now, what I would expect would be:
path dirname basename
"/usr/" "/usr" "" // more consistent?
So.. anybody understands what's going on here?
Definition and Usage. The dirname() function returns the path of the parent directory.
The dirname() function takes a pointer to a character string that contains a path name, and returns a pointer to a string that is a path name of the parent directory of that file.
Trailing '/' characters are not counted as part of the pathname.
Hence "/usr/" is the same as "/usr", which might denote a file or a directory with name (directory entry named) usr
in the directory /
. The function dirname
returns the parent directory of the path. The parent directory of /usr
is /
. Seems entirely consistent.
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