PHP basename

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the PHP basename() function to get the trailing name component of a path.

Introduction to the PHP basename() function #

The basename() function returns the trailing name component of path:

basename ( string $path , string $suffix = "" ) : stringCode language: PHP (php)

The basename() function has two parameters:

• $path is the file or directory path that you want to extract the trailing name component.
• $suffix if the name component ends with the suffix, it will be stripped off.

The basename() function returns the basename of a specific path.

On Windows, you can use both slash (/) and backslash (\) as the directory separator character. However, on other environments such as Linux, you can only use the forward-slash (/).

To get all components of file or directory path, you can use the pathinfo() function.

PHP basename() function example #

The following example shows how to use the basename() function to get the trailing name component of various paths:

<?php

echo "1) ".basename("/htdocs/index.php", ".php").PHP_EOL;
echo "2) ".basename("/htdocs/index.php").PHP_EOL;
echo "3) ".basename("/htdocs/public").PHP_EOL;
echo "4) ".basename("/htdocs/").PHP_EOL;
echo "5) ".basename(".").PHP_EOL;
echo "6) ".basename("/");Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Output:

1) index    
2) index.php
3) public
4) htdocs
5) .
6)Code language: CSS (css)

Summary #

• Use the PHP basename() fuction to get the trailing name component of a file or directory path.