explode!

I have a news database. One of the fields in the database is a field that describes the path to an image on the server. ie: ../images/imagefile.gif I have a script that deletes news stories from the database and this is where I am stuck. Everything works okay when deleting the story but when it comes to the deletion of the image file... no go. I have used the unlink function if ( ! ($delimage=unlink($imagefield))) { DisplayErrMsg(sprint("internal error %d:%s\n", mysql_errno(), mysql_error())); exit(); } The function fails with: Warning: Unlink failed (No such file or directory) in c:\Inetpub\wwwroot/news/admin/delete_news.php on line 24 internal error 0: I know that the info in the database is a URL (../images/imagefile.gif) and not an actual path. Is there a way to strip the url back to the image name and replace it with the path so the file can be removed?. I have explored the possibilities of the explode function and believe this is the function I need to use? (so far without much success!) Thus I have come to you fine folk for some help on how I might do this. Grateful for any pointers on this one, Regards, Karl.