Incase you need to find a file's path and filename, use basename( ) to get the filename and dirname( ) to get the path.

$full_filename = '/usr/local/php/php.ini';
$base = basename($full_name); // $base is php.ini
$dir = dirname($full_name);    // $dir is /usr/local/php

You can aslo try pathinfo( ) to get the directory name, base name, and extension into an associative array.

For a practical example, to create a temporary file in the same directory where the existing file is, use dirname( ) to
find the directory, and pass that directory to tempnam( ).

$dir = dirname($existing_file);
$temp = tempnam($dir,'temp');
$temp_fh = fopen($temp,'w');

The elements in the associative array returned by pathinfo( ) are dirname, basename, and extension:

$info = pathinfo('/usr/local/php/php.ini');
print_r($info);

This will give the output:

Array
(
    [dirname] => /usr/local/php
    [basename] => php.ini
    [extension] => ini
)

Using functions such as basename( ), dirname( ), and pathinfo( ) is better than splitting a full filename on / because they use an operating-system appropriate separator. On Windows, these functions treat both / and \ as file and directory separators. On other platforms, only / is used.

However, there is no built-in PHP function to combine the parts produced by basename( ), dirname( ), and pathinfo( ) back into a full filename. To do this you have to
combine the parts with . and /.

$dirname = '/usr/local/php';
$basename = 'php';
$extension = 'ini';
$full_filename = $dirname . '/' . $basename . '.' . $extension;