How to remove extension from file name (only real extension!)

Question

I'm looking for a small function that allows me to remove the extension from a filename.

I've found many examples by googling, but they are bad, because they just remove part of the string with "." . They use dot for limiter and just cut string.

Look at these scripts,

$from = preg_replace('/\.[^.]+$/','',$from);

or

 $from=substr($from, 0, (strlen ($from)) - (strlen (strrchr($filename,'.'))));

When we add the string like this:

This.is example of somestring

It will return only "This"...

The extension can have 3 or 4 characters, so we have to check if dot is on 4 or 5 position, and then remove it.

How can it be done?

What is a "real" extension ? You want to remove the last 4 or les chars if they are preceeded by a dot? — clyfe, Mar 07 '10 at 10:18
"Col. Shrapnel" - it's designed for Windows users. "clyfe" - yes, i want remove everything after dot, but only if it's on 4 or 5 position, what will represent ".jpeg" or ".mp3". I just wan't remove it. I know i can do it manually using str-pos and cut string using using if statement (if 5 pos = dot then cut (rtrim) from right 5 chars, if 4 pos = dot then rtrim 4, else return without any modification. But maybe it's faster solution. — marc, Mar 07 '10 at 10:30
What about .package files? Or .unity? Seems a bit arbitrary to restrict an extension to 4 characters. — rdb, Sep 16 '16 at 00:03

score 364 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 07 '22 at 02:23

364

http://php.net/manual/en/function.pathinfo.php

pathinfo — Returns information about a file path

$filename = pathinfo('filename.md.txt', PATHINFO_FILENAME); // returns 'filename.md'

edited Jan 07 '22 at 02:23

HoldOffHunger

18,769
10
104
133

answered Mar 20 '14 at 15:08

Timo Huovinen

53,325
33
152
143

score 187 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 05 '23 at 17:16

187

Try this one:

$withoutExt = preg_replace('/\.\w+$/', '', $filename);

So, this matches a dot followed by word characters ([a-zA-Z0-9_]) which are not a dot or a space.

edited Jun 05 '23 at 17:16

Timo Huovinen

53,325
33
152
143

answered Mar 07 '10 at 10:20

nickf

537,072
198
649
721

2

the problem is that there are also people who rename files like :`20120720.something.somethingelse.jpg` – Obmerk Kronen Jul 22 '12 at 03:27
4

I don't think this will work with files with two characters as an extension – NaturalBornCamper Aug 23 '12 at 19:18
1

ty! please note that you should use single quotes if you dont perform variable substitution e.g. `"$var"` – aelgoa Oct 29 '13 at 18:20
well, to use it with .py files i guess you have to add 2,3,4 instead of just 3,4 :> thanks! – voghDev Jun 13 '14 at 10:49
2

@voghDev to support extensions with 2 to 4 characters you should add `{2,4}` instead of `{3,4}` – Timo Huovinen Jun 19 '14 at 06:37
hi @nickf, can you explain more on what each character means in your code? – daffodil Jul 19 '19 at 03:18
It has so many likes and I think it doesn't always give the correct result, see previous comments. Dots can appear multiple times in filenames. A filename can have more or less than 3 or 4 characters. – Sarah Trees Sep 10 '21 at 06:16

score 86 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 03 '12 at 17:11

86

From the manual, pathinfo:

<?php
    $path_parts = pathinfo('/www/htdocs/index.html');

    echo $path_parts['dirname'], "\n";
    echo $path_parts['basename'], "\n";
    echo $path_parts['extension'], "\n";
    echo $path_parts['filename'], "\n"; // Since PHP 5.2.0
?>

It doesn't have to be a complete path to operate properly. It will just as happily parse file.jpg as /path/to/my/file.jpg.

edited Nov 03 '12 at 17:11

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Mar 07 '10 at 10:16

Erik

20,526
8
45
76

I already checked this. Same mistake as above. Try access "$path_parts['filename']" from T.sec - "xxx" 23 12 32 3 a twym2 It will return only T. From above example it shouldn't remove anything ! – marc Mar 07 '10 at 10:26

score 61 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 13 '12 at 12:25

61

Use PHP basename()

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

var_dump(basename('test.php', '.php'));

Outputs: string(4) "test"

answered Jul 13 '12 at 12:25

Yasen

3,400
1
27
22

2

+1 If the mentioned requirements for an extension weren't strict, this would be the perfect answer. – Kayla Mar 18 '14 at 21:24
1

Looking at the commits on [php.net](http://php.net/manual/en/function.basename.php#85597) there is an idea about working with an array...which I think could be improved using something such as [array-walk](http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-walk.php) – CrandellWS Feb 03 '15 at 16:10

wprenison · Answer 5 · 2014-05-09T23:30:59.497

40

This is a rather easy solution and will work no matter how long the extension or how many dots or other characters are in the string.

$filename = "abc.def.jpg";

$newFileName = substr($filename, 0 , (strrpos($filename, ".")));

//$newFileName will now be abc.def

Basically this just looks for the last occurrence of . and then uses substring to retrieve all the characters up to that point.

It's similar to one of your googled examples but simpler, faster and easier than regular expressions and the other examples. Well imo anyway. Hope it helps someone.

edited May 09 '14 at 23:30

answered May 09 '14 at 22:39

wprenison

544
4
11

3

I know this is coming way too late, but i think this is the best answer. Works great. – Agbogidi Michael Jun 29 '17 at 21:03
3

this won't work for *nix hidden files without extension for example, `.htaccess` – Fr0zenFyr Jul 03 '19 at 06:29

score 15 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 11 '19 at 03:11

15

Recommend use: pathinfo with PATHINFO_FILENAME

$filename = 'abc_123_filename.html';
$without_extension = pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_FILENAME);

answered Apr 11 '19 at 03:11

Alex

3,646
1
28
25

1

Wasn't this said 5 years earlier on this page? – mickmackusa Jun 29 '22 at 11:04

alex · Answer 7 · 2011-01-24T00:20:41.933

You could use what PHP has built in to assist...

$withoutExt = pathinfo($path, PATHINFO_DIRNAME) . '/' . pathinfo($path, PATHINFO_FILENAME);

Though if you are only dealing with a filename (.somefile.jpg), you will get...

./somefile

See it on CodePad.org

Or use a regex...

$withoutExt = preg_replace('/\.' . preg_quote(pathinfo($path, PATHINFO_EXTENSION), '/') . '$/', '', $path);

See it on CodePad.org

If you don't have a path, but just a filename, this will work and be much terser...

$withoutExt = pathinfo($path, PATHINFO_FILENAME);

See it on CodePad.org

Of course, these both just look for the last period (.).

As mentioned on last line of solution, it will fail for filenames like `.htaccess` — Fr0zenFyr, Jul 03 '19 at 06:31

score 9 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 03 '12 at 17:12

9

The following code works well for me, and it's pretty short. It just breaks the file up into an array delimited by dots, deletes the last element (which is hypothetically the extension), and reforms the array with the dots again.

$filebroken = explode( '.', $filename);
$extension = array_pop($filebroken);
$fileTypeless = implode('.', $filebroken);

edited Nov 03 '12 at 17:12

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Oct 02 '12 at 12:49

Emanegux

1,092
2
20
38

will return false if the file has no extension or empty if the file is `.htaccess` – Timo Huovinen Jun 19 '14 at 06:31

score 5 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 07 '10 at 12:46

5

I found many examples on the Google but there are bad because just remove part of string with "."

Actually that is absolutely the correct thing to do. Go ahead and use that.

The file extension is everything after the last dot, and there is no requirement for a file extension to be any particular number of characters. Even talking only about Windows, it already comes with file extensions that don't fit 3-4 characters, such as eg. .manifest.

answered Mar 07 '10 at 12:46

bobince

528,062
107
651
834

2

..and let's not forget `.htaccess` and `.htpasswd` in apache environments. – h2ooooooo Jan 10 '13 at 15:37

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 08 '13 at 16:09

There are a few ways to do it, but i think one of the quicker ways is the following

// $filename has the file name you have under the picture
$temp = explode( '.', $filename );
$ext = array_pop( $temp );
$name = implode( '.', $temp );

Another solution is this. I havent tested it, but it looks like it should work for multiple periods in a filename

$name = substr($filename, 0, (strlen ($filename)) - (strlen (strrchr($filename,'.'))));

Also:

$info = pathinfo( $filename );
$name = $info['filename'];
$ext  = $info['extension'];

// Or in PHP 5.4, i believe this should work
$name = pathinfo( $filename )[ 'filename' ];

In all of these, $name contains the filename without the extension

score 4 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 13 '18 at 16:33

4

$image_name = "this-is.file.name.jpg";
$last_dot_index = strrpos($image_name, ".");
$without_extention = substr($image_name, 0, $last_dot_index);

Output:

this-is.file.name

answered Feb 13 '18 at 16:33

Abhishek

968
10
16

1

`$the_extension = substr($image_name, $last_dot_index, $last_dot_index);` Add that to get the extension of the file. – I_ATE_YOUR_WORK_FILES Jun 12 '18 at 10:06

jbobbins · Answer 12 · 2017-11-06T18:44:13.857

As others mention, the idea of limiting extension to a certain number of characters is invalid. Going with the idea of array_pop, thinking of a delimited string as an array, this function has been useful to me...

function string_pop($string, $delimiter){
    $a = explode($delimiter, $string);
    array_pop($a);
    return implode($delimiter, $a);
}

Usage:

$filename = "pic.of.my.house.jpeg";
$name = string_pop($filename, '.');
echo $name;

Outputs:

pic.of.my.house  (note it leaves valid, non-extension "." characters alone)

In action:

http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/5d12a96ea548f696bd097e2986b22de7628314a0

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Aug 05 '18 at 15:36

This works when there is multiple parts to an extension and is both short and efficient:

function removeExt($path)
{
    $basename = basename($path);
    return strpos($basename, '.') === false ? $path : substr($path, 0, - strlen($basename) + strlen(explode('.', $basename)[0]));
}

echo removeExt('https://example.com/file.php');
// https://example.com/file
echo removeExt('https://example.com/file.tar.gz');
// https://example.com/file
echo removeExt('file.tar.gz');
// file
echo removeExt('file');
// file

score 1 · Answer 14 · edited Nov 03 '12 at 17:10

1

You can set the length of the regular expression pattern by using the {x,y} operator. {3,4} would match if the preceeding pattern occurs 3 or 4 times.

But I don't think you really need it. What will you do with a file named "This.is"?

edited Nov 03 '12 at 17:10

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Mar 07 '10 at 10:15

Your Common Sense

156,878
40
214
345

Tigger · Answer 15 · 2020-10-10T08:47:48.403

Landed on this page for looking for the fastest way to remove the extension from a number file names from a glob() result.

So I did some very rudimentary benchmark tests and found this was the quickest method. It was less than half the time of preg_replace():

$result = substr($fileName,0,-4);

Now I know that all of the files in my glob() have a .zip extension, so I could do this.

If the file extension is unknown with an unknown length, the following method will work and is still about 20% faster that preg_replace(). That is, so long as there is an extension.

$result = substr($fileName,0,strrpos($fileName,'.'));

The basic benchmark test code and the results:

$start = microtime(true);

$loop = 10000000;
$fileName = 'a.LONG-filename_forTest.zip';
$result;

// 1.82sec preg_replace() unknown ext
//do {
//    $result = preg_replace('/\\.[^.\\s]{3,4}$/','',$fileName);
//} while(--$loop);

// 1.7sec preg_replace() known ext
//do {
//    $result = preg_replace('/.zip$/','',$fileName);
//} while(--$loop);

// 4.57sec! - pathinfo
//do {
//    $result = pathinfo($fileName,PATHINFO_FILENAME);
//} while(--$loop);

// 2.43sec explode and implode
//do {
//    $result = implode('.',explode('.',$fileName,-1));
//} while(--$loop);

// 3.74sec basename, known ext
//do {
//    $result = basename($fileName,'.zip');
//} while(--$loop);

// 1.45sec strpos unknown ext
//do {
//    $result = substr($fileName,0,strrpos($fileName,'.'));
//} while(--$loop);

// 0.73sec strpos - known ext length
do {
    $result = substr($fileName,0,-4);
} while(--$loop);

var_dump($fileName);
var_dump($result);
echo 'Time:['.(microtime(true) - $start).']';

exit;

score 0 · Answer 16 · edited Oct 24 '13 at 16:32

0

Use this:

strstr('filename.ext','.',true);
//result filename

edited Oct 24 '13 at 16:32

undur_gongor

15,657
5
63
75

answered Oct 24 '13 at 16:12

Shintadoniku Alyssa

19
1

This only works if the filename does not have a period already. PHP Docs mention the first occurrence of needle – relipse May 02 '14 at 20:56

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Jan 21 '15 at 22:22

0

Try to use this one. it will surely remove the file extension.

$filename = "image.jpg";
$e = explode(".", $filename);
foreach($e as $key=>$d)
{
if($d!=end($e)
{

$new_d[]=$d; 
}

 }
 echo implode("-",$new_t);  // result would be just the 'image'

answered Jan 21 '15 at 22:22

Gilbert Aldava

1

You could reduce this to one line with array_pop() – Peter Brand Sep 15 '15 at 07:25

andcl · Answer 18 · 2017-10-31T10:17:09.207

0

EDIT: The smartest approach IMHO, it removes the last point and following text from a filename (aka the extension):

$name = basename($filename, '.' . end(explode('.', $filename)));

Cheers ;)

edited Oct 31 '17 at 10:17

answered Jan 26 '17 at 16:28

andcl

3,342
7
33
61

While it could work, `end()` isn't supposed to work with a function passed as parameter. It also produces a notice: _Only variables should be passed by reference_ – CodeBrauer Apr 26 '18 at 15:11

How to remove extension from file name (only real extension!)

18 Answers18

Linked

Related