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glob

(PHP 4 >= 4.3.0, PHP 5)

glob -- Find pathnames matching a pattern

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.

Parameters

pattern

The pattern. No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done.

flags

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  • GLOB_NOESCAPE - Backslashes do not quote metacharacters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

  • GLOB_ERR - Stop on read errors (like unreadable directories), by default errors are ignored.

Return Values

Returns an array containing the matched files/directories, an empty array if no file matched or FALSE on error.

ChangeLog

VersionDescription
5.1.0 GLOB_ERR was added
4.3.3 GLOB_ONLYDIR bacame available on Windows and other systems not using the GNU C library

Examples

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

<?php
foreach (glob("*.txt") as $filename) {
    echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "\n";
}
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

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

Notes

Note: This function will not work on remote files as the file to be examined must be accessible via the servers filesystem.

Note: This function isn't available on some systems (e.g. old Sun OS).

Note: The GLOB_BRACE flag is not available on some non GNU systems, like Solaris.

See Also

opendir()
readdir()
closedir()
fnmatch()

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