PHP file path extra dot

in a tutorial I am doing, the code below is in index.php file. Does the second "." in the file indicate that index.php is 开发者_如何学Gonot at the root level? what would the significance be of adding extra "." in that position?

require_once("../includes/database.php");

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This is a relative path to the current directory.

• "." indicates the current directory
• ".." indicates one level up in the directory structure

So the answer is yes, that file is not in the root level.

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Not necessarily. For security reasons it is recommended that your include files be placed outside the web-accessible directory (htdocs), so minimizing the possibility of someone calling the database.php directly with forged parameters.

So the directory structure should look somthing like:

user
| |
| + htdocs
|   |
|   + index.php
|
+ includes
  |
  + database.php

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.. means "one directory up"; ../.. would mean "two directories up".

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.. references to relative path one level up the current path.