Needed a quick function to remove relative elements from a path. Similar to PHP's realpath() but doesn't require the file to exist on the local filesystem. This also works for URLs.

function fakepath($url) {
	$split = preg_split("|/|",$url);
	$first = substr($url,0,1);

	foreach ($split as $item) {
		if ($item === "." || $item === "") {
			// If it's a ./ then it's nothing (just that dir) so don't add/delete anything
		} elseif ($item === "..") {
			// Remove the last item added since .. negates it.
			$removed = array_pop($ret);
		} else {
			$ret[] = $item;
		}
	}

	// Rebuild the string
	$ret = join("/",$ret);

	// Remove dupe /
	$ret = preg_replace("!/+!","/",$ret);

	// Restore the double / after the HTTP:
	$ret = preg_replace("!(https?:/)!","$1/",$ret);

	if ($first === '/') {
		$ret = "/$ret";
	}

	return $ret;
}