PHP on windows path comes up with backward slash

Question

Trying to setup a php website on my windows os. PHP code that I got from someone has lines like

$base_path = realpath('./../').'/'; 

This ends up with the string like c:\abc\xyz/

What settings I need to do on windows to force it to come with /. I read about DIRECTORY_SEPERATOR, but there are various places I need to worry about and hence if I could have it so that the realpath comes up with / it will be of great help to me.

Answer 1

A variation of Timothy's answer which uses the DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR constant instead of a conditional to simplify the function.

function platformSlashes($path) {
    return str_replace('/', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path);
}

$path = "/some/path/here";
echo platformSlashes($path);

Answer 2

The backslash is the directory separator on the Windows platform. But from what I understand and have experienced, when resolving paths your PHP script will still work with forward slashes. As a consequence, you could write all your code with forward slashes and not worry about it. The forward/backwardslashes are really only important if you're displaying the path to the user, like in a setup/installer script (most users of a site would have no need to know about directory structures nor care what platform the service is running on). You could create a display function that would identify the platform and replace the slashes as appropriate, and then pass the paths through this before showing them. The following is an example of what I'm suggesting, though I haven't tested it.

<?php
function platformSlashes($path) {
    if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) == 'WIN') {
        $path = str_replace('/', '\\', $path);
    }
    return $path;
}

$path = "/some/path/here";
echo platformSlashes($path);

Answer 3

Just do a replace on the string you have:

$base_path = realpath('./../') . '/';
$base_path_mod = str_replace('\\', '/', $base_path);