1 .\" $OpenBSD: dirname.3,v 1.17 2007/05/31 19:19:28 jmc Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 1997 Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>
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24 .Nd extract the directory part of a pathname
28 .Fn dirname "char *path"
32 function is the converse of
34 it returns a pointer to the parent directory of the pathname pointed to by
38 characters are not counted as part of the directory
40 .Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
41 This implementation of
43 uses the buffer provided by the caller to store the resulting parent
45 Other vendor implementations may return a pointer to internal storage
47 The advantage of the former approach is that it ensures thread-safety,
48 while also placing no upper limit on the supported length of the
53 is a null pointer, the empty string, or contains no
57 returns a pointer to the string
59 signifying the current directory.
61 it returns a pointer to the parent directory of
75 function first appeared in
82 this function was reimplemented to store its result in the provided
85 .An Nuxi, the Netherlands