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.

Note:

The running script must have executable permissions on all directories in the hierarchy, otherwise realpath() will return FALSE.

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