On 9 Dec 2008, at 23:24, Daniel Kolbo wrote:

Maciek Sokolewicz wrote:
Daniel Kolbo wrote:
What is the preferred method with php to test and see if a file [pattern] exists?

For example, i only need to search in one directory, that may have any number of files named such as afile1.txt, afile2.txt, afile3.txt, .... And also, bfile1.txt, bfile2.txt, bfile3.txt, ... I want to see if any such file 'family' exists. That is, i want to see if there is any file named bfile[1-9][0-9]+.txt. I don't care which bfile number exists, i just want to know if any bfile exists.

I hope this is clear enough, if not let me know.

thanks,
dK


glob()

http://www.php.net/glob
How portable is glob?
How fast is glob? Being that it searches through the entire filesystem, this could potentially take a long time (like if i have wildcards early in the filepath pattern and lots of matches) correct? If my file variations (wildcards) are just at the end of of the filepaths and i don't have more than 1000 files in the directory then will I most likely be 'alright' with glob (in terms of time)? I have probably spent more time now 'considering' the time implications of glob, than glob actually would consume when operating...

Thanks for the quick response/solutions.
dK

Glob works on all platforms.

Glob does suffer from performance issues above a certain number of files, and this can be system dependant. If you're unsure how many files it may return you'd be better using opendir/readdir.

Not sure where you got the idea that glob searches the entire file system, but it's limited to either the current working directory or the directory you specify. So if your PHP file is in /var/www/htdocs and you do glob('*.txt') you'll get all .txt files in /var/www/htdocs. And if you do glob('/tmp/*.txt') you'll get all .txt files in /tmp.

-Stut

--
http://stut.net/

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