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BASENAME(3) Library Functions Manual BASENAME(3)

basenameextract the base portion of a pathname

#include <libgen.h>

char *
basename(char *path);

The () function returns the last component from the pathname pointed to by path, deleting any trailing ‘/’ characters. If path consists entirely of ‘/’ characters, a pointer to the string "/" is returned. If path is a null pointer or the empty string, a pointer to the string "." is returned.

On successful completion, basename() returns a pointer to the last component of path.

If basename() fails, a null pointer is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

The following error codes may be set in errno:

[]
The path component to be returned was larger than PATH_MAX.

basename(1), dirname(1), dirname(3)

The basename() function conforms to the X/Open System Interfaces option of the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

The basename() function first appeared in OpenBSD 2.2.

Todd C. Miller

basename() returns a pointer to internal static storage space that will be overwritten by subsequent calls.

Other vendor implementations of basename() may modify the contents of the string passed to basename(); this should be taken into account when writing code which calls this function if portability is desired.

October 20, 2020 OpenBSD-7.2