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<Filesystem Functionschgrp>
^Filesystem FunctionsLast updated: Mon, 26 Oct 2026

basename

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

basename — Returns trailing name component of path

Description

function basename(string $path, string $suffix = ""): string

Given a string containing the path to a file or directory, this function will return the trailing name component.

Note:

basename() operates naively on the input string, and is not aware of the actual filesystem, or path components such as "..".

Caution

basename() is locale aware, so for it to see the correct basename with multibyte character paths, the matching locale must be set using the setlocale() function. If path contains characters which are invalid for the current locale, the behavior of basename() is undefined.

Parameters

path

A path.

On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash (\) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash (/).

suffix

If the name component ends in suffix this will also be cut off.

Return Values

Returns the base name of the given path.

Examples

Example #1 basename() example

<?php
echo "1) ".basename("/etc/sudoers.d", ".d").PHP_EOL;
echo "2) ".basename("/etc/sudoers.d").PHP_EOL;
echo "3) ".basename("/etc/passwd").PHP_EOL;
echo "4) ".basename("/etc/").PHP_EOL;
echo "5) ".basename(".").PHP_EOL;
echo "6) ".basename("/");
?>

The above example will output:

1) sudoers
2) sudoers.d
3) passwd
4) etc
5) .
6)

See Also

  • dirname() - Returns a parent directory's path
  • pathinfo() - Returns information about a file path


<Filesystem Functionschgrp>
^Filesystem FunctionsLast updated: Mon, 26 Oct 2026