github.com/jaredpalmer/terraform@v1.1.0-alpha20210908.0.20210911170307-88705c943a03/website/docs/language/functions/dirname.html.md (about) 1 --- 2 layout: "language" 3 page_title: "dirname - Functions - Configuration Language" 4 sidebar_current: "docs-funcs-file-dirname" 5 description: |- 6 The dirname function removes the last portion from a filesystem path. 7 --- 8 9 # `dirname` Function 10 11 `dirname` takes a string containing a filesystem path and removes the last 12 portion from it. 13 14 This function works only with the path string and does not access the 15 filesystem itself. It is therefore unable to take into account filesystem 16 features such as symlinks. 17 18 If the path is empty then the result is `"."`, representing the current 19 working directory. 20 21 The behavior of this function depends on the host platform. On Windows systems, 22 it uses backslash `\` as the path segment separator. On Unix systems, the slash 23 `/` is used. The result of this function is normalized, so on a Windows system 24 any slashes in the given path will be replaced by backslashes before returning. 25 26 Referring directly to filesystem paths in resource arguments may cause 27 spurious diffs if the same configuration is applied from multiple systems or on 28 different host operating systems. We recommend using filesystem paths only 29 for transient values, such as the argument to [`file`](./file.html) (where 30 only the contents are then stored) or in `connection` and `provisioner` blocks. 31 32 ## Examples 33 34 ``` 35 > dirname("foo/bar/baz.txt") 36 foo/bar 37 ``` 38 39 ## Related Functions 40 41 * [`basename`](./basename.html) returns _only_ the last portion of a filesystem 42 path, discarding the portion that would be returned by `dirname`.