Codeigniter relative path file

Question

I am new to codeigniter (and php in general) and I am following the tutorial to learn it. Following this link : https://www.codeigniter.com/user_guide/tutorial/static_pages.html

in the controller it checks whether the a file exists using

 if ( ! file_exists('application/views/pages/'.$page.'.php'))

My question is: this script is running from application/controllers/pages.php so isn't the path given to file_exists relative to the current script ? that is it should point to application/controllers/application/views/pages/'.$page.'.php'.

However this is not the case and the path in fact checks files relative to the path root ! So is this php matter or codeigniter ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

All paths are relative to the entry script (likely index.php or whatever Codeigniter uses).

To get paths relative to the current script use the __FILE__ constant.

file_exists(dirname(__FILE__) . "/path/to/file.php");