realpath

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

realpath — Devuelve el nombre de la ruta absoluta canonizado

Descripción

realpath(string $path): string

realpath() expande todos los enlaces simbólicos y resuelve las referencias de caracteres '/./', '/../' y '/' extra, en la ruta de entrada dada por path y devuelve el nombre de la ruta absoluta canonizado.

Parámetros

path

La ruta que va a ser comprobada.

Nota:
Aunque se debe proporcionar una ruta, el valor puede estar en blanco o ser null. En estos casos, el valor es interpretado como el directorio actual.

Valores devueltos

Devuelve el nombre de la ruta absoluta canonizado en caso de éxito. La ruta resultante no tendrá componentes de enlaces simbólicos, '/./' o '/../'. Los delimitadores finales, como \ y /, también son eliminados.

realpath() devuelve false en caso de error, p.ej. si el fichero no existe.

Nota:
El script en ejecución debe tener permisios de ejecución en todos los directorios de la jerarquía, de lo contrario realpath() devolverá false.

Nota:
Para sistema de ficheros que no tengan en cuenta las mayúsculas/minúsculas, realpath() podría o no normalizar las mayúsculas/minúsculas de cada carácter.

Nota: Debido a que el tipo integer de PHP es con signo y muchas plataformas usan enteros de 32 bits, algunas funciones de sistema de ficheros pueden devolver resultados inesperados para ficheros que son mayores de 2 GB.

Historial de cambios

Versión	Descripción
5.3.0	Antes de esta versión, si en sistemas BSD el último componente de `path` no existía, realpath()* no fallaba. Ahora realpath() también falla en este caso.
5.2.1	Antes de esta versión, realpath() devolvía `false` si `path` era un string vacío o `null`.

Ejemplos

Ejemplo #1 Ejemplo de realpath()

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

echo realpath('/tmp/') . PHP_EOL;
?>

El resultado del ejemplo sería:

/etc/passwd
/tmp

Ejemplo #2 realpath() en Windows

En windows realpath() cambiará las rutas del estilo unix al estilo windows.

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

echo realpath('C:\Archivos de programa\\');
?>

El resultado del ejemplo sería:

C:\WINDOWS\System32
C:\Archivos de programa

Ver también

basename() - Devuelve el último componente de nombre de una ruta
dirname() - Devuelve la ruta de un directorio padre
pathinfo() - Devuelve información acerca de la ruta de un fichero

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User Contributed Notes 17 notes

down

Sven Arduwie ¶

16 years ago


Because realpath() does not work on files that do not
exist, I wrote a function that does.
It replaces (consecutive) occurences of / and \\ with
whatever is in DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, and processes /. and /.. fine.
Paths returned by get_absolute_path() contain no
(back)slash at position 0 (beginning of the string) or
position -1 (ending)
<?php
    function get_absolute_path($path) {
        $path = str_replace(array('/', '\\'), DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path);
        $parts = array_filter(explode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path), 'strlen');
        $absolutes = array();
        foreach ($parts as $part) {
            if ('.' == $part) continue;
            if ('..' == $part) {
                array_pop($absolutes);
            } else {
                $absolutes[] = $part;
            }
        }
        return implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $absolutes);
    }
?>

A test:
<?php
    var_dump(get_absolute_path('this/is/../a/./test/.///is'));
?>
Returns: string(14) "this/a/test/is" 

As you can so, it also produces Yoda-speak. :)

down

runeimp at gmail dot com ¶

11 years ago


Needed a method to normalize a virtual path that could handle .. references that go beyond the initial folder reference. So I created the following.
<?php

function normalizePath($path)
{
    $parts = array();// Array to build a new path from the good parts
    $path = str_replace('\\', '/', $path);// Replace backslashes with forwardslashes
    $path = preg_replace('/\/+/', '/', $path);// Combine multiple slashes into a single slash
    $segments = explode('/', $path);// Collect path segments
    $test = '';// Initialize testing variable
    foreach($segments as $segment)
    {
        if($segment != '.')
        {
            $test = array_pop($parts);
            if(is_null($test))
                $parts[] = $segment;
            else if($segment == '..')
            {
                if($test == '..')
                    $parts[] = $test;

                if($test == '..' || $test == '')
                    $parts[] = $segment;
            }
            else
            {
                $parts[] = $test;
                $parts[] = $segment;
            }
        }
    }
    return implode('/', $parts);
}
?>

Will convert /path/to/test/.././..//..///..///../one/two/../three/filename
to ../../one/three/filename

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moreau dot marc dot web at gmail dot com ¶

5 years ago


<?php

namespace MockingMagician\Organic\Helper;

class Path
{
    /**
     * There is a method that deal with Sven Arduwie proposal https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.realpath.php#84012
     * And runeimp at gmail dot com proposal https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.realpath.php#112367
     * @param string $path
     * @return string
     */
    public static function getAbsolute(string $path): string
    {
        // Cleaning path regarding OS
        $path = mb_ereg_replace('\\\\|/', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path, 'msr');
        // Check if path start with a separator (UNIX)
        $startWithSeparator = $path[0] === DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
        // Check if start with drive letter
        preg_match('/^[a-z]:/', $path, $matches);
        $startWithLetterDir = isset($matches[0]) ? $matches[0] : false;
        // Get and filter empty sub paths
        $subPaths = array_filter(explode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path), 'mb_strlen');

        $absolutes = [];
        foreach ($subPaths as $subPath) {
            if ('.' === $subPath) {
                continue;
            }
            // if $startWithSeparator is false
            // and $startWithLetterDir
            // and (absolutes is empty or all previous values are ..)
            // save absolute cause that's a relative and we can't deal with that and just forget that we want go up
            if ('..' === $subPath
                && !$startWithSeparator
                && !$startWithLetterDir
                && empty(array_filter($absolutes, function ($value) { return !('..' === $value); }))
            ) {
                $absolutes[] = $subPath;
                continue;
            }
            if ('..' === $subPath) {
                array_pop($absolutes);
                continue;
            }
            $absolutes[] = $subPath;
        }

        return
            (($startWithSeparator ? DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR : $startWithLetterDir) ?
                $startWithLetterDir.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR : ''
            ).implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $absolutes);
    }

    /**
     * Examples
     *
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('/one/two/../two/./three/../../two');            =>    /one/two
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('../one/two/../two/./three/../../two');          =>    ../one/two
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('../.././../one/two/../two/./three/../../two');  =>    ../../../one/two
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('../././../one/two/../two/./three/../../two');   =>    ../../one/two
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('/../one/two/../two/./three/../../two');         =>    /one/two
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('/../../one/two/../two/./three/../../two');      =>    /one/two
     * echo Path::getAbsolute('c:\.\..\one\two\..\two\.\three\..\..\two');     =>    c:/one/two
     *
     */
}

down

Anonymous ¶

12 years ago


Note: If you use this to check if a file exists, it's path will be cached, and returns true even if the file is removed (use file_exists instead).

down

David Beck ¶

18 years ago


Here's a function to canonicalize a URL containing relative paths. Ran into the problem when pulling links from a remote page.

<?php

function canonicalize($address)
{
    $address = explode('/', $address);
    $keys = array_keys($address, '..');

    foreach($keys AS $keypos => $key)
    {
        array_splice($address, $key - ($keypos * 2 + 1), 2);
    }

    $address = implode('/', $address);
    $address = str_replace('./', '', $address);
}

$url = 'http://www.example.com/something/../else';
echo canonicalize($url); //http://www.example.com/else

?>

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pulstar at ig dot com dot br ¶

20 years ago


Sometimes you may need to refer to the absolute path of a file in your website instead of a relative path, but the realpath() function returns the path relative to the server's filesystem, not a path relative to your website root directory. 

For example, realpath() may return something like this:

/home/yoursite/public_html/dir1/file.ext

You can't use this in an HTML document, because the web server will not find the file. To do so, you can use:

<?php

function htmlpath($relative_path) {
    $realpath=realpath($relative_path);
    $htmlpath=str_replace($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'],'',$realpath);
    return $htmlpath;
}

echo '<img src="',htmlpath('../../relative/path/to/file.ext'),'" border=1>'; 

?>

It will return something like:

<img src="/dir1/relative/path/to/file.ext" border=1>

down

plamen at dragiyski dot org ¶

5 years ago


realpath() is just a system/library call to actual realpath() function supported by OS. It does not work on a path as a string, but also resolves symlinks. The resulting path might significantly differs from the input even when absolute path is given. No function in this notes resolves that.

The suggestion on the realpath man page is to look for an existing parent directory. Here is an example:
<?php
    function resolvePath($path) {
        if(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR !== '/') {
            $path = str_replace(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, '/', $path);
        }
        $search = explode('/', $path);
        $search = array_filter($search, function($part) {
            return $part !== '.';
        });
        $append = array();
        $match = false;
        while(count($search) > 0) {
            $match = realpath(implode('/', $search));
            if($match !== false) {
                break;
            }
            array_unshift($append, array_pop($search));
        };
        if($match === false) {
            $match = getcwd();
        }
        if(count($append) > 0) {
            $match .= DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $append);
        }
        return $match;
    }
?>

The result will retrieve absolute path for non-existing relative path. Even if a path does not exists, there should be existing directory somewhere, for which the realpath could be obtained. If this is not within the relative path (i.e. even current working directory does not exists), getcwd() will retrieve absolute path, so some absolute path is returned (although in that case the PHP process could have huge problems).

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Jrg Wagner ¶

14 years ago


Please be aware that this function does NOT always strip a trailing slash!:

LINUX (tested with PHP 5.2.11):
---
realpath('.')
: string = "/myhttpdfolder" 
realpath('./')
: string = "/myhttpdfolder" 
realpath('fileadmin')
: string = "/myhttpdfolder/fileadmin" 
realpath('fileadmin/')
: string = "/myhttpdfolder/fileadmin" 

WINDOWS (tested with PHP 5.2.5):
---
realpath('.')
: string = "C:\\myhttpdfolder" 
realpath('./')
: string = "C:\\myhttpdfolder\\" 
realpath('fileadmin')
: string = "C:\\myhttpdfolder\\fileadmin" 
realpath('fileadmin/')
: string = "C:\\myhttpdfolder\\fileadmin\\"

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https://stackoverflow.com/users/1397947/ ¶

7 years ago


It should probably be expressly noted that tilde expansion is not performed by realpath.

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Vincent Par ¶

9 years ago


Beware of relative symbolic links like this one (ext4 file system on Ubuntu) :

    vincent@vincent:~/Bureau/dirscan$ readlink sandbox/roulant/voiture/cabriolet/ln-loop-relative
    ../..

In this case, realpath may return false :

<?php
var_dump(realpath('sandbox/roulant/voiture/cabriolet/ln-loop-relative'));
// => string(44) "/home/vincent/Bureau/dirscan/sandbox/roulant"
var_dump(realpath('sandbox/roulant/voiture/cabriolet/ln-loop-relative/moto'));
// => bool(false)
?>

But you can fix it by clearing the realpath cache, this way :

<?php
var_dump(realpath('sandbox/roulant/voiture/cabriolet/ln-loop-relative'));
clearstatcache(true);
var_dump(realpath('sandbox/roulant/voiture/cabriolet/ln-loop-relative/moto'));
// => string(49) "/home/vincent/Bureau/dirscan/sandbox/roulant/moto"
?>

down

imagiro ¶

13 years ago


Here is a small and handy method to calculate the relative path from $from to $to. Note: On Windows it does not work when $from and $to are on different drives.

<?php
function relativePath($from, $to, $ps = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR)
{
  $arFrom = explode($ps, rtrim($from, $ps));
  $arTo = explode($ps, rtrim($to, $ps));
  while(count($arFrom) && count($arTo) && ($arFrom[0] == $arTo[0]))
  {
    array_shift($arFrom);
    array_shift($arTo);
  }
  return str_pad("", count($arFrom) * 3, '..'.$ps).implode($ps, $arTo);
}
?>

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eion at robbmob dot com ¶

9 years ago


Be aware that realpath() doesn't work with hidden Windows UNC paths, eg  \\servername\share$\folder\blah.txt but other PHP file-functions can access that file fine.

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Lars Scheithauer <l dot scheithauer at gmx dot de> ¶

19 years ago


This function is also nice to test for security-breaches. You can forbid the script to access files below a certain directory to prevent "../../../etc/shadow" and similar attacks:

<?php

// declare the basic directory for security reasons
// Please do NOT attach a "/"-suffix !
$basedir = '/var/www/cgi-bin/scriptfolder';

// compare the entered path with the basedir
$path_parts = pathinfo($_REQUEST['file_to_get']);
if (realpath($path_parts['dirname']) != $basedir) {
    /* appropriate action against crack-attempt*/
    die ('coding good - h4x1ng bad!');
}

?>

The url "script.php?file_to_get=../../../etc/shadow" will now result in an error.

down

php at keith tyler dot com ¶

13 years ago


Note that under Windows, a slash-rooted path will resolve on the local drive, and *not* necessarily C:\.

For example:

M:\>php -r "print realpath('/AUTOEXEC.BAT');"
[prints nothing, because there is no M:\AUTOEXEC.BAT]

But:

M:\>C:
C:\>php -r "print realpath('/AUTOEXEC.BAT');"
C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT

Same script, different response depending on current drive.

I'm inclined to argue that this function *should* use the value of %SystemDrive% as the "slash root" base.

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Leonard Challis ¶

11 years ago


When using realpath (and similar functions) remember that PHP will take in to account open_basedir restrictions. So, if you do something like:

<?php
// test.php in httpdocs folder
$path = realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application');
?>

where your open_basedir setting is set to the httpdocs folder and tmp, this will return false. You must set it to the level above (or off) for this to work.

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belisoful at icloud dot com ¶

1 year ago


Sven Arduwie answer is not tested and does not replicate the behavior of realpath but is a close solution.

This has been unit tested to be as close to realpath as possible but without the path having to actually exist in the system.

This takes relative paths and realizes them properly based on actual current working directory, but everything can be virtual. eg.  "../someVirtualDir/./virtualFile.jpg"

<?php

    public static function virtualpath($path): string
    {
        $path = str_replace(['/', '\\'], DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path);
        $len = strlen($path);
        $relative = strpos($path, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
        if (!$len || ($len > 0 && $path[0] == '.') || $relative !== 0) {
            $path = getcwd() . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $path;
        }
        $parts = array_filter(explode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $path), 'strlen');
        $absolutes = [];
        foreach ($parts as $part) {
            if ('.' == $part) {
                continue;
            }
            if ('..' == $part) {
                array_pop($absolutes);
            } else {
                $absolutes[] = $part;
            }
        }
        return DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $absolutes);
    }

?>

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-1

Enzo dot Barbaguelatta at alma dot cl ¶

2 years ago


Be noticed that, one of the reasons of realtpath retuning false can be if the path does not exist, or it has permission issues, or even if security modules of your operating system (let's say, SELinux for example) avoids you checking the path.

If you're like me and you had a not very good time checking why realpath retuns false, please check these points first.

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