Which function is better suited to retrieve the basename of a file in PHP: basename or pathinfo? [closed]

Question

What's the recommended way of grabbing the basename (file name without extension) of a file in PHP?

echo basename('foo.jpg', '.jpg');
// outputs "foo"

echo pathinfo('foo.jpg', PATHINFO_FILENAME);
// outputs "foo"

Apparently both produce the same output. What are the advantages of using one over the other?

Performance wise it looks like basename() is faster by approximately 300ms over 1,000,000 iterations:

<?php

$f = 'foo.jpg';
$n = 1000000;

$start = microtime(true);

for ($i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
    basename($f);
}

$stop1 = microtime(true);

for ($i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
    pathinfo($f, PATHINFO_FILENAME);
}

$stop2 = microtime(true);

echo "Basename result: " . ($stop1 - $start) . " seconds\n";
echo "Pathinfo result: " . ($stop2 - $stop1) . " seconds\n";

This outputs:

Basename result: 1.0358278751373 seconds
Pathinfo result: 1.3277871608734 seconds

Besides the marginal performance gains, I'm also interested on how are these functions implemented behind the scenes? Is the underlying algorithm for retrieving the basename similar in both cases?

Answer 1

If you only want the basename, then use the basename function. As always in any case, try to use the less consuming operation; why to create an array of info you won't need (using pathinfo) when you can get what you want in a string directly (with basename function)?