realpath not working as expected

[attaboy]

$plPath = '../backend/playlist_form.php';

$absolute_plPath = realpath($plPath);

echo $plPath;   // returns ../backend/playlist_form.php 

echo $absolute_plPath;  // returns nothing at all on either my localhost or on my hosted site.

 

going crazy here

[Barand]

realpath will just return false if the path/file does not exist

[attaboy]

that would be fine if the path did not exits but as you can see from my output the path does exist.

echo $plPath;   // returns ../backend/playlist_form.php

I thought that maybe by the time I ran echo $absolute_plPath; that $absolute_plPath did not exist so I tried

echo realpath('../backend/playlist_form.php'); and still nothing.

[Barand]

that only proves that the string value "../backend/playlist_form.php" exists

[attaboy]

nevermind I was wrong the path wasn't real  thanks for the help.