Re: what is this: dirname(__FILE__)?

On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 20:04, Sam Smith wrote: > I don't recognize this something(__SOMETHING__) format. I know what it's > doing but I don't know how it's doing it. Constants of the type __SOMETHING__ are historical constants for retrieving contextual information about the source code in which the constant is found. For instance __FILE__ indicates the name of the source file in which the __FILE__ constant is found. This nomenclature dates back to at least C and is probably kept for historical reasons since everyone knows C is da bomb! > The whole thing is "$fdf_dir=dirname(__FILE__).'/results';" and of course > it's setting that var $fdf_dir to the path to a file. This means it's setting $fdf_dir to the path to a file called "results" that is in the same directory as the source file containing __FILE__. > Is there something significant about the double underscores "__"? Yep as stated above :) There are numberous such constants such as __LINE__ to retrieve the current source code line number (very useful for debugging at times), __CLASS__, __FUNCTION__ etc. > Why the parentheses, it's not a function? dirname() is a function. > Sorry lame question but I don't know this. RTFM ;) Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------'