pathinfo

    (PHP 4 >= 4.0.3, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

    pathinfo — Returns information about a file path

    Description

    function pathinfo(string $path, int $flags = PATHINFO_ALL): array|string

    pathinfo() returns information about path: either an associative array or a string, depending on flags.

    Note:

    For information on retrieving the current path info, read the section on predefined reserved variables.

    Note:

    pathinfo() operates naively on the input string, and is not aware of the actual filesystem, or path components such as "..".

    Note:

    On Windows systems only, the \ character will be interpreted as a directory separator. On other systems it will be treated like any other character.

    Caution

    pathinfo() is locale aware, so for it to parse a path containing multibyte characters correctly, the matching locale must be set using the setlocale() function.

    Parameters

    path

    The path to be parsed.

    flags

    If present, specifies a specific element to be returned; one of PATHINFO_DIRNAME, PATHINFO_BASENAME, PATHINFO_EXTENSION or PATHINFO_FILENAME.

    If flags is not specified, returns all available elements.

    Return Values

    If the flags parameter is not passed, an associative array containing the following elements is returned: dirname, basename, extension (if any), and filename.

    Note:

    If the path has more than one extension, PATHINFO_EXTENSION returns only the last one and PATHINFO_FILENAME only strips the last one. (see first example below).

    Note:

    If the path does not have an extension, no extension element will be returned (see second example below).

    Note:

    If the basename of the path starts with a dot, the following characters are interpreted as extension, and the filename is empty (see third example below).

    If flags is present, returns a string containing the requested element.

    Examples

    Example #1 pathinfo() Example

    <?php
$path_parts = pathinfo('/www/htdocs/inc/lib.inc.php');

echo $path_parts['dirname'], "\n";
echo $path_parts['basename'], "\n";
echo $path_parts['extension'], "\n";
echo $path_parts['filename'], "\n";
?>

    The above example will output:

    /www/htdocs/inc
lib.inc.php
php
lib.inc

    Example #2 pathinfo() example showing difference between null and no extension

    <?php
$path_parts = pathinfo('/path/emptyextension.');
var_dump($path_parts['extension']);

$path_parts = pathinfo('/path/noextension');
var_dump($path_parts['extension']);
?>

    The above example will output something similar to:

    string(0) ""

Notice: Undefined index: extension in test.php on line 6
NULL

    Example #3 pathinfo() example for a dot-file

    <?php
print_r(pathinfo('/some/path/.test'));
?>

    The above example will output something similar to:

    Array
(
    [dirname] => /some/path
    [basename] => .test
    [extension] => test
    [filename] =>
)

    Example #4 pathinfo() example with array dereferencing

    The flags parameter is not a bitmask. Only a single value may be provided. To select only a limited set of parsed values, use array destructuring like so: 

    <?php
['basename' => $basename, 'dirname' => $dirname] = pathinfo('/www/htdocs/inc/lib.inc.php');

var_dump($basename, $dirname);
?>

    The above example will output something similar to:

    string(11) "lib.inc.php"
string(15) "/www/htdocs/inc"

    See Also

    • dirname() - Returns a parent directory's path
    • basename() - Returns trailing name component of path
    • parse_url() - Parse a URL and return its components
    • realpath() - Returns canonicalized absolute pathname

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    User Contributed Notes 3 notes

    up
    11
    Pietro Baricco
    14 years ago
    Use this function in place of pathinfo to make it work with UTF-8 encoded file names too

<?php
function mb_pathinfo($filepath) {
    preg_match('%^(.*?)[\\\\/]*(([^/\\\\]*?)(\.([^\.\\\\/]+?)|))[\\\\/\.]*$%im',$filepath,$m);
    if($m[1]) $ret['dirname']=$m[1];
    if($m[2]) $ret['basename']=$m[2];
    if($m[5]) $ret['extension']=$m[5];
    if($m[3]) $ret['filename']=$m[3];
    return $ret;
}
?>
    up
    7
    urvi
    3 years ago
    about the path, there are one thing you should note :
On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash (\) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash (/).  (this explain is from basename() function part https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.basename.php)
example:
<?php
$path = "https://urvidutta.com /a\b\c\filename.pdf";

echo pathinfo($pdfUrl, PATHINFO_BASENAME);  //get basename
//output
//on window:  result is filename.pdf
//on Linux: result is a\b\c\filename.pdf (that is may not your expect)

//so in order to get same result in different system.  i will do below first.
$path = str_replace($path, '\\', '/'); //convert '\'  to '/'
?>
    up
    8
    n0dalus
    21 years ago
    If a file has more than one 'file extension' (seperated by periods), the last one will be returned.
For example:
<?php
$pathinfo = pathinfo('/dir/test.tar.gz');
echo 'Extension: '.$pathinfo['extension'];
?>
will produce:
Extension: gz

and not tar.gz
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