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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22 .Nd extract the directory part of a pathname
26 .Fn dirname "char *path"
30 function is the converse of
32 it returns a pointer to the parent directory of the pathname pointed to by
36 characters are not counted as part of the directory
38 .Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
39 This implementation of
41 uses the buffer provided by the caller to store the resulting parent
43 Other vendor implementations may return a pointer to internal storage
45 The advantage of the former approach is that it ensures thread-safety,
46 while also placing no upper limit on the supported length of the
51 is a null pointer, the empty string, or contains no
55 returns a pointer to the string
57 signifying the current directory.
59 it returns a pointer to the parent directory of
73 function first appeared in
80 this function was reimplemented to store its result in the provided
83 .An Nuxi, the Netherlands