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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T15:54:51+00:00

Lots of famous PHP scripts including WordPress use dirname(__FILE__).’/myParent.php’ instead of just ‘myParent.php’ when

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Lots of famous PHP scripts including WordPress use dirname(__FILE__).'/myParent.php' instead of just 'myParent.php' when including files in the same directory of the currently running script.

Aren’t they the same thing? Why do you prefer typing more?

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    PHP needs to know the absolute path to the file. dirname(__FILE__).'/myParent.php' already is the absolute path but 'myParent.php' requires a lookup using the given paths in include_path to get an absolute path and find the file. A better choice would be './myParent.php':

    However, it is more efficient to explicitly use include './file' than having PHP always check the current directory for every include.

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