PHP: remove filename from path - php

Question

Say I have an path: images/alphabet/abc/23345.jpg
How do I remove the file at the end from the path? So I end up with: images/aphabet/abc/

Answer 1

You want dirname()

Answer 2

dirname() only gives you the parent folder's name, so dirname() will fail where pathinfo() will not.
For that, you should use pathinfo():
$dirname = pathinfo('images/alphabet/abc/23345.jpg', PATHINFO_DIRNAME);
The PATHINFO_DIRNAME tells pathinfo to directly return the dirname.
See some examples:
For path images/alphabet/abc/23345.jpg, both works:
<?php
$dirname = dirname('images/alphabet/abc/23345.jpg');
// $dirname === 'images/alphabet/abc/'
$dirname = pathinfo('images/alphabet/abc/23345.jpg', PATHINFO_DIRNAME);
// $dirname === 'images/alphabet/abc/'
For path images/alphabet/abc/, where dirname fails:
<?php
$dirname = dirname('images/alphabet/abc/');
// $dirname === 'images/alphabet/'
$dirname = pathinfo('images/alphabet/abc/', PATHINFO_DIRNAME);
// $dirname === 'images/alphabet/abc/'

Answer 3

<?php
$path = pathinfo('images/alphabet/abc/23345.jpg');
echo $path['dirname'];
?>
http://php.net/manual/en/function.pathinfo.php

Answer 4

Note that when a string contains only a filename without a path (e.g. "test.txt"), the dirname() and pathinfo() functions return a single dot (".") as a directory, instead of an empty string. And if your string ends with "/", i.e. when a string contains only path without filename, these functions ignore this ending slash and return you a parent directory. In some cases this may be undesirable behavior and you need to use something else. For example, if your path may contain only forward slashes "/", i.e. only one variant (not both slash "/" and backslash "\") then you can use this function:
function stripFileName(string $path): string
{
if (($pos = strrpos($path, '/')) !== false) {
return substr($path, 0, $pos);
} else {
return '';
}
}
Or the same thing little shorter, but less clear:
function stripFileName(string $path): string
{
return substr($path, 0, (int) strrpos($path, '/'));
}