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PHP: pathinfo - Manual

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

pathinfo — Returns information about a file path

Description

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.

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

Found A Problem?

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;
}
?>

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 '/'
?>

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