How to get the parent directory of the current folder in a C program?

Question

I am trying to get the parent directory of the current folder in which i have the program. I need to include in the C program I have. I tried doing it through string methods and solve it, but I feel there can be a better and simpler way. Eg: If his path is “C:\Application\Config”, then I want to get - “C:\Application” the just parent path.
Can some one please help me with this?

Thanks, Priyanka

Solution 1

To in-place truncate a string at its last backslash:

char pathname[MAX_PATH];
GetCurrentDirectory(MAX_PATH, pathname);
char* last_backslash = strrchr(pathname, '\\'); 
if (last_backslash)
{
    *last_backslash = '\0';
}

Solution 2

Sometimes just adding \.. will suffice if you are not afraid by MAX_PATH.

Solution 3

It's difficult to answer your question since you haven't really specified what you want to -do- with the path once you have it. If you want to change to the new directory, that's easy, you just use whatever function you'd normally use to change directory but pass it ".." instead of a full path - that's because on all sane filesystems, ".." is a 'magic' directory which exists inside all other directories and refers to the parent thereof.

If you want to perform some string function on the new directory before jumping to it, your problem instantly becomes a lot more difficult to solve. The way I'd go about doing it mirrors RichieHindle's solution - strip the current directory away from the full path then you're left with the parent directory's path with which you can muck about to your heart's content.