Re: what is this: dirname(__FILE__)?

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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.
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