PHP: glob - Manual

Description

array glob ( string pattern [, int flags] )

The glob() function searches for all the pathnames matching pattern according to the rules used by the libc glob() function, which is similar to the rules used by common shells. No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done.

Returns an array containing the matched files/directories or FALSE on error.

Valid flags:

GLOB_MARK - Adds a slash to each item returned
GLOB_NOSORT - Return files as they appear in the directory (no sorting)
GLOB_NOCHECK - Return the search pattern if no files matching it were found
GLOB_NOESCAPE - Backslashes do not quote metacharacters
GLOB_BRACE - Expands {a,b,c} to match 'a', 'b', or 'c'
GLOB_ONLYDIR - Return only directory entries which match the pattern

Notatka: Before PHP 4.3.3 GLOB_ONLYDIR was not available on Windows and other systems not using the GNU C library.

Przykład 1. Convenient way how glob() can replace opendir() and friends.


<?php

foreach (glob("*.txt") as $filename) {

    echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "\n";

}

?>

Output will look something like:

funclist.txt size 44686
funcsummary.txt size 267625
quickref.txt size 137820

Notatka: Ta funkcja nie będzie działać dla zdalnych plików, ponieważ przetwarzany plik musi być dostępny poprzez system plików serwera.

User Contributed Notes


I've written a function that I've been using quite a lot over the past year or so. I've built whole websites and their file based CMSs based on this one function, mostly because (I think) databases are not as portable as groups of files and folders. In previous versions, I used opendir and readdir to get contents, but now I can do in one line what used to take several. How? Most of the work in the whole script is done by calling



glob("$dir/*")



Giving me an array containing the names of the items in the folder, minus the ones beginning with '.', as well as the ones I specify.



<?php



/* alpharead version 3: This function returns an array containing the names of the files inside any given folder, excluding files that start with a '.', as well as the filenames listed in the '$killit' array. This array is sorted using the 'natural alphabetical' sorting manner. If no input is given to the function, it lists items in the script's interpreted folder. Version 3 fixes a MAJOR bug in version 2 which corrupted certain arrays with greater than 5 keys and one of the supposedly removed filenames.

written by Admiral at NuclearPixel.com */



function alpharead3($dir){

if(!$dir){$dir = '.';}

foreach(glob("$dir/*") as $item){$sort[]= end(explode('/',$item));}



$killit = array('index.html', 'index.php', 'thumbs.db', 'styles.css');

$killcounter = 0;

foreach($sort as $sorteditem){

foreach($killit as $killcheck){

if(strtolower($sorteditem) == strtolower($killcheck))

{unset($sort[$killcounter]);}

}$killcounter++;}

if($sort){natsort($sort);}

foreach($sort as $item){$return[]= $item;}



if(!$return){return array();}

return $return;

}



//some basic usage



$folder = 'images';

foreach(alpharead3($folder) as $item)

{

echo '<img src="'.$folder.'/'.$item.'"><br>'.$item."\n";

}



?>



Commens on this function are welcome!


Whilst on Windows, a path starting with a slash resolves OK for most file functions - but NOT glob. 

If the server is LAUNCHED (or chdir()ed) to W:, then 

file_exists("/temp/test.txt")

returns true for the file "W:/temp/test.txt".

But glob("/temp/*.txt") FAILS to find it!



A solution (if you want to avoid getting drive letters into your code) is to chdir() first, then just look for the file.

<?php

$glob="/temp/*.txt";

chdir(dirname($glob));

// getcwd() is now actually "W:\temp" or whatever



foreach (glob(basename($glob)) as $filename) {

   $filepath = dirname($glob)."/".$filename; // must re-attach full path

   echo "$filepath size " . filesize($filepath) . "\n";

}

?>



Note also, glob() IS case sensitive although most other file funcs on Windows are not.


This is a replacement for glob on servers that are running a php version < 4.3



It supports * and ? jokers, and stacking of parameters with ;  



So you can do 



<? $results=glob('/home/user/*.txt;*.doc') ?>



And it will return an array of matched files.  



As is the behaviour of the built-in glob function, this one will also return boolean false if no matches are found, and will use the current working directory if none is specified.



<?php

if(!(function_exists('glob')))

{function glob($pattern)

 {#get pathname (everything up until the last / or \)

  $path=$output=null;

  if(PHP_OS=='WIN32')

   $slash='\\';

  else

   $slash='/';

  $lastpos=strrpos($pattern,$slash);

  if(!($lastpos===false))

  {$path=substr($pattern,0,-$lastpos-1); #negative length means take from the right

   $pattern=substr($pattern,$lastpos);

  }

  else

  {#no dir info, use current dir

   $path=getcwd();

  }

  $handle=@ opendir($path);

  if($handle===false)

   return false;

  while($dir=readdir($handle))

  {if(pattern_match($pattern,$dir))

    $output[]=$dir;

  }

  closedir($handle);

  if(is_array($output))

   return $output;

  return false;

 }



 function pattern_match($pattern,$string)

 {#basically prepare a regular expression

  $out=null;

  $chunks=explode(';',$pattern);

  foreach($chunks as $pattern)

  {$escape=array('$','^','.','{','}',

                 '(',')','[',']','|');

   while(strpos($pattern,'**')!==false)

    $pattern=str_replace('**','*',$pattern);

   foreach($escape as $probe)

    $pattern=str_replace($probe,"\\$probe",$pattern);

   $pattern=str_replace('?*','*',

             str_replace('*?','*',

              str_replace('*',".*",

               str_replace('?','.{1,1}',$pattern))));

   $out[]=$pattern;

  }

  if(count($out)==1)

   return(eregi("^$out[0]$",$string));

  else

   foreach($out as $tester)

    if(eregi("^$tester$",$string))

     return true;

   return false;

 }

}

?>



This function is case insensitive, but if needed, you can do this to make it behave depending on os:



* replace eregi in the example with my_regexp



add this function

<?php

function my_regexp($pattern,$probe)

{$sensitive=(PHP_OS!='WIN32');

  $sensitive=false;

 return ($sensitive?

     ereg($pattern,$probe):

     eregi($pattern,$probe));

}

?>


In regards to the comments made by: NOSPAM sketch at infinite dot net dot au, he is wrong about Unix/Linux (I can't speak for Windows).  I am running PHP 5.0.4 and I ran a bunch of different tests on relative and absolute paths using the glob function and they all work on Unix/Linux.  I also tested glob on empty directories and patterns which don't match any files (even directories or files which don't exist) and it __always__ returns an empty array.  I couldn't get the glob function to return false so it looks like it always returns an array.


A slight edit on the globr() function stated by sthomas. This does exactly the same just works on windows systems for < PHP 4.3.3. :



<?php



function globr($sDir, $sPattern, $nFlags = NULL) {

    $aFiles = glob("$sDir/$sPattern", $nFlags); 

    $files = getDir($sDir);

    if (is_array($files)) {

        foreach( $files as $file ) {

            $aSubFiles = globr($file, $sPattern, $nFlags);

            $aFiles = array_merge($aFiles,$aSubFiles);

        }

    }

    return $aFiles;

}



function getDir($sDir) {

    $i=0;

    if(is_dir($sDir)) {

        if($rContents = opendir($sDir)) {

            while($sNode = readdir($rContents)) {

                if(is_dir($sDir.'/'.$sNode )) {

                    if($sNode !="." && $sNode !="..") {

                        $aDirs[$i] = $sDir.'/'.$sNode ;

                        $i++;

                    }

                }

            }

        }

    }

    return $aDirs;

}



?>


Here is a way I used glob() to browse a directory, pull the file name out, resort according to the most recent date and format it using date(). I called the function inside a <select> and had it go directly to the PDF file:



function browsepdf(){

    $pdffile=glob("printable/*.pdf");

    rsort($pdffile);

    foreach($pdffile as $filename){

        $filename=ltrim($filename, "printable/");

        $filename=rtrim($filename, ".pdf");

        $file=$filename;

        $datetime=strtotime($filename);

        $newdate=strtotime("+3 days",$datetime);

        $filenamedate=date("F d", $datetime);

        $filenamedate.=" - ".date("F d, Y", $newdate);

        echo "<option value='$file'>$filenamedate</option>";

    }

}


glob caused me some real pain in the buttom on windows, because of the DOS thing with paths (backslashes instead of slashes)...



This was my own fault because I "forgot" that the backslash, when used in strings, needs to be escaped, but well, it can cause a lot of confusion, even for people who are not exactly newbies anymore...



For some reason, I didn't have this problem with other file operations (chdir, opendir, etc...), which was the most confusing of all...



So, for people running scripts on Windows machines (Dos95, 98 or WinNT or DosXP), just remember this:



glob('c:\temp\*.*'); // works correctly, returns an array with files.

glob("c:\temp\*.*"); // does NOT work... the backslashes need to be escaped...

glob("c:\\temp\\*.*"); // that works again...



This is especially confusing when temporary writable directories are returned as an unescaped string.



$tempdir = getenv('TEMP');

// this returns "C:\DOCUME~1\user\LOCALS~1\Temp"

so in order to scan that directoy I need to do:



glob($tempdir . "\\*.*");



Or perhaps it's easier to replace all backslashes with slashes in order to avoid these kinds of confusions...



glob("c:/temp/*.*"); // works fine too...



I know I'm not contributing anything new here, but I just hope this post may avoid some unnecessary headaches...


in the example below, i found i got an error if the directory was empty.



<?php

foreach (glob("*.txt") as $filename) {

   echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "\n";

}

?>



I think its because glob()'ing an empty directory returns false, and so calling foreach (false as $value) will obviously break.



to fix this, i did the following:

<?php

$files = glob("*.txt) or array(); // give it an empty array if the directory is empty or glob fails otherwise

   echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "n";

}

?>



Hope this helps someone


The example on this page will generate a warning if the glob function does not find any filenames that match the pattern.



The glob function result will only be an array if it finds some files and the foreach statement requires its argument to be an array.



By checking for the possibility that the result of the glob function may not be an array you can eliminate the warning.



Here's a better example:



<?php

$matches = glob("*.txt");

if ( is_array ( $matches ) ) {

   foreach ( $matches as $filename) {