2 .\" Copyright (c) 1997 Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>
3 .\" All rights reserved.
5 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
6 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
8 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
9 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
10 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
11 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
12 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
13 .\" 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
14 .\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
16 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
17 .\" INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY
18 .\" AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL
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20 .\" EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
21 .\" PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
22 .\" OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
23 .\" WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
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27 .\" $OpenBSD: dirname.3,v 1.9 2000/04/18 03:01:25 aaron Exp $
28 .\" $FreeBSD: src/lib/libc/gen/dirname.3,v 1.1.2.6 2003/03/15 15:11:05 trhodes Exp $
29 .\" $DragonFly: src/lib/libc/gen/dirname.3,v 1.3 2007/08/18 20:48:47 swildner Exp $
36 .Nd extract the directory part of a pathname
42 .Fn dirname "const char *path"
49 it returns a pointer to the parent directory of the pathname pointed to by
53 characters are not counted as part of the directory
57 is a null pointer, the empty string, or contains no
61 returns a pointer to the string
63 signifying the current directory.
65 On successful completion,
67 returns a pointer to the parent directory of
72 fails, a null pointer is returned and the global variable
74 is set to indicate the error.
76 The following error codes may be set in
79 .It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
80 The path component to be returned was larger than
87 returns a pointer to internal static storage space that will be overwritten
88 by subsequent calls (each function has its own separate storage).
90 Other vendor implementations of
92 may modify the contents of the string passed to
94 this should be taken into account when writing code which calls this function
95 if portability is desired.
108 function first appeared in
113 Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>