Getting a directory name from a filename

Using Boost.Filesystem:

boost::filesystem::path p("C:\\folder\\foo.txt");
boost::filesystem::path dir = p.parent_path();

Example from http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/find_last_of/

// string::find_last_of
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

void SplitFilename (const string& str)
{
  size_t found;
  cout << "Splitting: " << str << endl;
  found=str.find_last_of("/\\");
  cout << " folder: " << str.substr(0,found) << endl;
  cout << " file: " << str.substr(found+1) << endl;
}

int main ()
{
  string str1 ("/usr/bin/man");
  string str2 ("c:\\windows\\winhelp.exe");

  SplitFilename (str1);
  SplitFilename (str2);

  return 0;
}

In C++17 there exists a class std::filesystem::path using the method parent_path.

#include <iostream>
#include <filesystem>
namespace fs = std::filesystem;
int main()
{
    for(fs::path p : {"/var/tmp/example.txt", "/", "/var/tmp/."})
        std::cout << "The parent path of " << p
                  << " is " << p.parent_path() << '\n';
}

Possible output:

The parent path of "/var/tmp/example.txt" is "/var/tmp"
The parent path of "/" is ""
The parent path of "/var/tmp/." is "/var/tmp"

There is a standard Windows function for this, PathRemoveFileSpec. If you only support Windows 8 and later, it is highly recommended to use PathCchRemoveFileSpec instead. Among other improvements, it is no longer limited to MAX_PATH (260) characters.

Getting a directory name from a filename

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