c - Parent directory of a file

Question

Is there any way to find out the parent directory of a file using C program. I would like to give same permissions for the file that the directory has. So as to do so, i would like to know the parent directory of the file. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

If you have the path of the file, you can do it manually by making it an absolute path if it is relative (doesn't begin with a / on Unix, or a letter: or or letter:/ or / on Windows) and then splitting it on file separator characters (/ or ), but I am aware of no built-in function that will do all of this for you.

The basename and dirname functions may help, but you'll need to figure out enough of the path of the file yourself, as they only work with strings; they do not interrogate the file system.