when to use DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR in PHP code?

Question

require_once dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . './../../../wp-config.php';
require_once dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'inc/options.php';

The above code is from a plugin from the Wordpress. I don't understand why half of it uses DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, but the other half uses "/" ?

Answer 1

Because in different OS there is different directory separator. In Windows it's \ in Linux it's /. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR is constant with that OS directory separator. Use it every time in paths.

In you code snippet we clearly see bad practice code. If framework/cms are widely used it doesn't mean that it's using best practice code.

Answer 2

All of the PHP IO functions will internally convert slashes to the appropriate character, so it's not a huge deal which method you use. Below are some things to consider.

• It can look ugly and confusing when you print out your file paths and there is a mix of \ and /. This won't ever happen if DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR is used

• Using something such as $generated_css = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'minified.css'; will work all fine and dandy for file IO, but if a developer unknowingly references it in a URL such as echo "<link rel='stylesheet'href='https:​//example.com$generated_css'>";, a bug was just created. Did you catch it? While this will work on Windows, for everyone else a forward slash, instead of a backslash, will be in $generated_css, resulting in the percent encoded, non-existant, URL https://example.com%5cgenerated_css! When using a DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR you have to take special care to make sure your filepath variables never end up in a URL.

• And lastly, in the unlikely scenario your filepath is used by non-PHP code — for example, in a shell_exec call — you won't be able to mix slashes and will need to either construct the filepath with DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR or use realpath.