PHP Pocket Reference

Directory Functions

The following functions are used to manipulate directories. For example, to open the current directory and read in all the entries, you can do something like this:

$handle = opendir('.'); 
while($entry = readdir($handle)) { 
   echo "$entry<br>\n";
} 
closedir($handle);

PHP supports a dir class that represents a directory. Here’s an example of using this object-oriented approach to reading a directory:

$d = dir("/etc");
echo "Handle: ".$d->handle."<br>\n";
echo "Path: ".$d->path."<br>\n";
while($entry=$d->read(  )) {
   echo $entry."<br>\n";
}
$d->close(  );

In addition to the read( ) and close( ) methods, the dir class supports a rewind( ) method.

Here are the directory functions supported by PHP:

int chdir(string directory)

Change the current directory

void closedir([int dir_handle])

Close the directory connection identified by the dir_handle, or a previously opened directory if not specified

class dir(string directory)

Return a class with handle and path properties as well as read, rewind, and close methods

int opendir(string directory)

Open a directory and return a dir_handle

string readdir(int dir_handle)

Read a directory entry from dir_handle

void rewinddir(int dir_handle)

Rewind dir_handle back to the start