Filesystem Functions
PHP Manual

realpath

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

realpathReturns canonicalized absolute pathname

Description

string realpath ( string $path )

realpath() expands all symbolic links and resolves references to '/./', '/../' and extra '/' characters in the input path . and return the canonicalized absolute pathname.

Parameters

path

The path being checked.

Return Values

Returns the canonicalized absolute pathname on success. The resulting path will have no symbolic link, '/./' or '/../' components.

realpath() returns FALSE on failure, e.g. if the file does not exist.

Changelog

Version Description
5.3.0 Prior to this release realpath() would not fail on *BSD systems if only the last last path component did not exist.

Examples

Example #1 realpath() example

<?php
chdir
('/var/www/');
echo 
realpath('./../../etc/passwd');
?>

The above example will output:

/etc/passwd

Example #2 realpath() on Windows

On windows realpath() will change unix style paths to windows style.

<?php
echo realpath('/windows/system32');
?>

The above example will output:

C:\WINDOWS\System32

See Also


Filesystem Functions
PHP Manual