What does glob return php?

User Contributed Notes

crayonviolent at phpfreaks dot com

7 years ago

Since I feel this is rather vague and non-helpful, I thought I'd make a post detailing the mechanics of the glob regex.

glob uses two special symbols that act like sort of a blend between a meta-character and a quantifier.  These two characters are the * and ?

The ? matches 1 of any character except a /
The * matches 0 or more of any character except a /

If it helps, think of the * as the pcre equivalent of .* and ? as the pcre equivalent of the dot (.)

Note: * and ? function independently from the previous character. For instance, if you do glob("a*.php") on the following list of files, all of the files starting with an 'a' will be returned, but * itself would match:

a.php // * matches nothing
aa.php // * matches the second 'a'
ab.php // * matches 'b'
abc.php // * matches 'bc'
b.php // * matches nothing, because the starting 'a' fails
bc.php // * matches nothing, because the starting 'a' fails
bcd.php // * matches nothing, because the starting 'a' fails

It does not match just a.php and aa.php as a 'normal' regex would, because it matches 0 or more of any character, not the character/class/group before it.

Executing glob("a?.php") on the same list of files will only return aa.php and ab.php because as mentioned, the ? is the equivalent of pcre's dot, and is NOT the same as pcre's ?, which would match 0 or 1 of the previous character.

glob's regex also supports character classes and negative character classes, using the syntax [] and [^]. It will match any one character inside [] or match any one character that is not in [^].

With the same list above, executing

glob("[ab]*.php) will return (all of them):
a.php  // [ab] matches 'a', * matches nothing
aa.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches 2nd 'a'
ab.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches 'b'
abc.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches 'bc'
b.php // [ab] matches 'b', * matches nothing
bc.php // [ab] matches 'b', * matches 'c'
bcd.php // [ab] matches 'b', * matches 'cd'

glob("[ab].php") will return a.php and b.php

glob("[^a]*.php") will return:
b.php // [^a] matches 'b', * matches nothing
bc.php // [^a] matches 'b', * matches 'c'
bcd.php // [^a] matches 'b', * matches 'cd'

glob("[^ab]*.php") will return nothing because the character class will fail to match on the first character.

You can also use ranges of characters inside the character class by having a starting and ending character with a hyphen in between.  For example, [a-z] will match any letter between a and z, [0-9] will match any (one) number, etc..

glob also supports limited alternation with {n1, n2, etc..}.  You have to specify GLOB_BRACE as the 2nd argument for glob in order for it to work.  So for example, if you executed glob("{a,b,c}.php", GLOB_BRACE) on the following list of files:

a.php
b.php
c.php

all 3 of them would return.  Note: using alternation with single characters like that is the same thing as just doing glob("[abc].php").  A more interesting example would be glob("te{xt,nse}.php", GLOB_BRACE) on:

tent.php
text.php
test.php
tense.php

text.php and tense.php would be returned from that glob.

glob's regex does not offer any kind of quantification of a specified character or character class or alternation.  For instance, if you have the following files:

a.php
aa.php
aaa.php
ab.php
abc.php
b.php
bc.php

with pcre regex you can do ~^a+\.php$~ to return

a.php
aa.php
aaa.php

This is not possible with glob.  If you are trying to do something like this, you can first narrow it down with glob, and then get exact matches with a full flavored regex engine.  For example, if you wanted all of the php files in the previous list that only have one or more 'a' in it, you can do this:

<?php
   $list = glob("a*.php");
   foreach ($list as $l) {
      if (preg_match("~^a+\.php$~",$file))
         $files[] = $l;
   }
?>

glob also does not support lookbehinds, lookaheads, atomic groupings, capturing, or any of the 'higher level' regex functions.

glob does not support 'shortkey' meta-characters like \w or \d.

redcube at gmx dot de

9 years ago

The answer for the difference in the dirsize function of "management at twilightus dot net":

glob('*') ignores all 'hidden' files by default. This means it does not return files that start with a dot (e.g. ".file").
If you want to match those files too, you can use "{,.}*" as the pattern with the GLOB_BRACE flag.

<?php
// Search for all files that match .* or *
$files = glob('{,.}*', GLOB_BRACE);
?>

Note: This also returns the directory special entries . and ..

uramihsayibok, gmail, com

6 years ago

Those of you with PHP 5 don't have to come up with these wild functions to scan a directory recursively: the SPL can do it.

<?php

$dir_iterator

dragos dot rusu at ymail dot com

6 years ago

Glob function doesn't return the hidden files (including ".*" files). PHP5 RecursiveIterator can be used for iterating through directories recursively.

carlos dot lage at nospam at foo dot bar at gmail dot com

7 years ago

I lost hours looking for the solution for this problem.
glob() wasn't eating up my directory names (stuff like "foobar[]"), and I searched online for some hours, I tried preg_quote to no avail.

I finally found the proper way to escape stuff in glob() in an obscure Python mailing list:

<?php
preg_replace('/(\*|\?|\[)/', '[$1]', $dir_path);
?>

If you want to add a directory path before your pattern, you should do it like this:

<?php
glob(preg_replace('/(\*|\?|\[)/', '[$1]', $dir_path).'*.txt');
?>
preg_quote WILL NOT work in all cases (if any).

Mike

4 years ago

<?phpif ( ! function_exists('glob_recursive'))
{
    // Does not support flag GLOB_BRACEfunction glob_recursive($pattern, $flags = 0)
    {
        $files = glob($pattern, $flags);

                foreach (

ni dot pineau at gmail dot com

3 years ago

Note that in case you are using braces with glob you might retrieve duplicated entries for files that matche more than one item :

<?php

$a

Gabriel S. Luraschi

3 years ago

Use this to exclude hidden files on MS Windows.

<?php
exec("dir \"{$path}\" /A:-H /B", $result);
?>

alan at synergymx dot com

8 years ago

Here is a function that returns specific files in an array, with all of the details. Includes some basic garbage checking.

Variables

$source_folder // the location of your files
$ext // file extension you want to limit to (i.e.: *.txt)
$sec // if you only want files that are at least so old.

The function

function glob_files($source_folder, $ext, $sec, $limit){
    if( !is_dir( $source_folder ) ) {
        die ( "Invalid directory.\n\n" );
    }

        $FILES = glob($source_folder."\*.".$ext);
    $set_limit    = 0;

        foreach($FILES as $key => $file) {

            if( $set_limit == $limit )    break;

                if( filemtime( $file ) > $sec ){

                    $FILE_LIST[$key]['path']    = substr( $file, 0, ( strrpos( $file, "\\" ) +1 ) );
            $FILE_LIST[$key]['name']    = substr( $file, ( strrpos( $file, "\\" ) +1 ) );   
            $FILE_LIST[$key]['size']    = filesize( $file );
            $FILE_LIST[$key]['date']    = date('Y-m-d G:i:s', filemtime( $file ) );
            $set_limit++;

                }

            }
    if(!empty($FILE_LIST)){
        return $FILE_LIST;
    } else {
        die( "No files found!\n\n" );
    }
}

So....

$source_folder = "c:\temp\my_videos";
$ext = "flv"; // flash video files
$sec = "7200"; // files older than 2 hours
$limit = 2;

print_r(glob_files($source_folder, $ext, $sec, $limit));

Would return:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [path] => c:\temp\my_videos\
            [name] => fluffy_bunnies.flv
            [size] => 21160480
            [date] => 2007-10-30 16:48:05
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [path] => c:\temp\my_videos\
            [name] => synergymx.com.flv
            [size] => 14522744
            [date] => 2007-10-25 15:34:45
        )

NOSPAM sketch at infinite dot net dot au

11 years ago

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

david dot schueler at tel-billig dot de

5 years ago

Don't use glob() if you try to list files in a directory where very much files are stored (>100.000). You get an "Allowed memory size of XYZ bytes exhausted ..." error.
You may try to increase the memory_limit variable in php.ini. Mine has 128MB set and the script will still reach this limit while glob()ing over 500.000 files.

The more stable way is to use readdir() on very large numbers of files:
<?php
// code snippet
if ($handle = opendir($path)) {
    while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
        // do something with the file
        // note that '.' and '..' is returned even
    }
    closedir($handle);
}
?>

peter dot adrianov at gmail dot com

5 years ago

Non-recursive search files, proceeding down directory tree.

<?php
function scandir_through($dir)
{
    $items = glob($dir . '/*');

    for (

Ultimater at gmail dot com

5 years ago

glob() isn't limited to one directory:

<?php
$results=glob("{includes/*.php,core/*.php}",GLOB_BRACE);
echo '<pre>',print_r($results,true),'</pre>';
?>

Just be careful when using GLOB_BRACE regarding spaces around the comma:
{includes/*.php,core/*.php} works as expected, but
{includes/*.php, core/*.php} with a leading space, will only match the former as expected but not the latter
unless you have a directory named " core" on your machine with a leading space.
PHP can create such directories quite easily like so:
mkdir(" core");

agd243 at gmail dot com

3 years ago

A simple function that find all files by extension an return it by an array.
<?php
function findFiles($directory, $extensions = array()) {
    function glob_recursive($directory, &$directories = array()) {
        foreach(glob($directory, GLOB_ONLYDIR | GLOB_NOSORT) as $folder) {
            $directories[] = $folder;
            glob_recursive("{$folder}/*", $directories);
        }
    }
    glob_recursive($directory, $directories);
    $files = array ();
    foreach($directories as $directory) {
        foreach($extensions as $extension) {
            foreach(glob("{$directory}/*.{$extension}") as $file) {
                $files[$extension][] = $file;
            }
        }
    }
    return $files;
}
var_dump(findFiles("C:", array ("jpg",
    "pdf",
    "png",
    "html"
)));
?>

mif

2 years ago

glob() doesn't work on php 5.4.14 with curl extension.

error:
Call to undefined function glob()

function_exists('glob') — false

without curl - ok.

Sam Bryan

4 years ago

glob is case sensitive, even on Windows systems.

It does support character classes though, so a case insensitive version of
<?php glob('my/dir/*.csv') ?>

could be written as
<?php glob('my/dir/*.[cC][sS][vV]') ?>

soywiz at gmail dot com

3 years ago

Recursive glob for PHP>=5.5

function globRecursive($path, $find) {
    $dh = opendir($path);
    while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
        if (substr($file, 0, 1) == '.') continue;
        $rfile = "{$path}/{$file}";
        if (is_dir($rfile)) {
            foreach (globRecursive($rfile, $find) as $ret) {
                yield $ret;
            }
        } else {
            if (fnmatch($find, $file)) yield $rfile;
        }
    }
    closedir($dh);
}

bisqwit at iki dot fi

8 years ago

Pomle.com wrote:
> Here's a function that behaves as a recursive glob(). It does
> rely on shell command find, but works like a charm.
> function glob_rec($pattern, $path) {
>    return explode("\n", shell_exec("find $path -name $pattern"));
> }

Do note that this command has a security hole.
If the $path or $pattern given includes special characters, for example a command substitution such as "`rm index.php`", the shell will process it and execute that command.

You can fix the problem by either escaping the characters properly (use shell_escape) or by writing a function that actually calls glob(), or opendir()/readdir()/closedir(), recursively.

Anonymous

11 years ago

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 $filename) {
      echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "\n";
   }
}
?>

alan at ridersite dot org

9 years ago

A couple of notes:
glob() handles symbolic filesystem links and resolves references to './', '../'  nicely and handles an extra '/' character , at least on X-systems. e.g., glob("../*") will do next higher dir.

This is good to use so warnings or errors show as "../foo" and not your system's full path.

Several of the examples use a notation "*.*" when just plain "*" does the same thing.  The "*.*" notation is misleading as it implies foo.ext will not be found with "*" because the "." is not present.

Watch the flags must not be strings. They are defined constants. Thus,
glob("../*", GLOB_ONLYDIR)  works;
glob("../*", "GLOB_ONLYDIR")  does not.

endiku

6 years ago

For those who need to recursively search a directory tree and cannot or wish not to call a function within itself here is another suggestion.

I tried the previously suggested listdirs_safe() and it didn't seem to find all subfolders in a directory tree.

There are two variations on the same theme.

Single Array.
<?php
$dir ='/dir';
while($dirs = glob($dir . '/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR)) {
  $dir .= '/*';
  if(!$d) {
     $d=$dirs;
   } else {
      $d=array_merge($d,$dirs);
   }
}
?>

Multiple arrays.
<?php
$n=0;
$dir ='/dir';
while($dirs = glob($dir . '/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR)) {
  $dir .= '/*';
  if(!$d) {
     $d=$dirs;
   } else {
     $d[$n]=$dirs;
   }
  $n++;
}
?>

This will result in the glob looping via "dir/*/*/*/*.." until it is no longer finding a directory structure.

sharshun dot aliaksandr at gmail dot com

5 months ago

<?phpfunction glob_recursive($pattern, $flags = 0){
// forked from https://github.com/rodurma/PHP-Functions/
    // blob/master/glob_recursive.php
  $files = glob($pattern, $flags);

         foreach (

rene dot rathmann at gmx dot de

2 years ago

You can do a recursive file search with yield.

<?php
function findAllDirs($start) {
    $dirStack=[$start];
    while($dir=array_shift($dirStack)) {
        $ar=glob($dir.'/*',GLOB_ONLYDIR|GLOB_NOSORT);
        if(!$ar) continue;$dirStack=array_merge($dirStack,$ar);
        foreach($ar as $DIR)
            yield $DIR;
    }
}$fname='*.php';
$result=[];
foreach(findAllDirs('/var/www/localhost') as $dir) {
    $match=glob($dir.'/'.$fname,GLOB_NOSORT);
    if(!$match) continue;
    $result=array_merge($result,$match);
}print_r($result);
?>

nuntius

6 years ago

First off, it's nice to see all of the different takes on this. Thanks for all of the great examples.

Fascinated by the foreach usage I was curious how it might work with a for loop. I found that glob was well suited for this, especially compared to opendir.  The for loop is always efficient when you want to protect against a potential endless loop.

$dir=$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/test/directory_listing/test";
    echo $dir;
    $filesArray=glob($dir."/*.*");

        $line.="<pre>";
    $line.=print_r($filesArray, true);
    $line.="</pre>";
    $line.="<hr>";

        for($i=0;$i<count($filesArray);$i++) {
        $line.=key($filesArray)." - ";   
        $line.=$filesArray[$i]."<br/>";
         next($filesArray);
    }

    echo $line;

Note that I pulled the glob array keys if you should need them.

Also you can tweak it for searches with something like this... (case sensitive)

$search_names="Somedocname";
$filesArray=glob($dir."/".$search_names."*.*");

    Enjoy!

r dot hartung at roberthartung dot de

6 years ago

You can use multiple asterisks with the glob() - function.

Example:

<?php
  $paths = glob('my/*/dir/*.php');
?>

$paths will contains paths as following examples:

- my/1/dir/xyz.php
- my/bar/dir/bar.php
- my/bar/dir/foo.php

heavyraptor at gmail dot com

7 years ago

glob() (array_sum() and array_map() in fact too) can be very useful if you want to calculate the sum of all the files' sizes located in a directory:

<?php
$bytes = array_sum(array_map('filesize',glob('*')));
?>

Unfortunately there's no way to do this recursively, using glob() (as far as I know).

parazuce [at] gmail [dot] com

8 years ago

As a response to a post by viajy at yoyo dot org on 10-Feb-2007 04:50, he posted the following code:
<?php
function listdirs($dir) {
    static $alldirs = array();
    $dirs = glob($dir . '/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR);
    if (count($dirs) > 0) {
        foreach ($dirs as $d) $alldirs[] = $d;
    }
    foreach ($dirs as $dir) listdirs($dir);
    return $alldirs;
}
?>

It is not best practice to use recursive functions like that, so I wrote a safe (non-recursive) function below:

<?php
function listdirs_safe($start)
{
    $dir  = $start;
    $dirs = array();
    $next = 0;

    while (

wang yun

6 years ago

A function to quickly remove a directory (works in seconds for a hundred thousand files)

<?php
/**
* Remove the directory and its content (all files and subdirectories).
* @param string $dir the directory name
*/
function rmrf($dir) {
    foreach (glob($dir) as $file) {
        if (is_dir($file)) {
            rmrf("$file/*");
            rmdir($file);
        } else {
            unlink($file);
        }
    }
}
?>

Per Lundberg

12 years ago

Be aware that on UNIX, * as the pattern will *not* match dot-files and dot-directories.  Knowing this will save you some headache.  :-)  May He bless you.

pope at q dot com

8 years ago

alan at ridersite dot org 18-Mar-2007 03:26 -- Stated '*.*' is the same as '*' -- This is not true as * alone will return directories too and *.* will only return files with an extension such as .pdf or .doc or .php.

martinlarsen at bigfoot dot com

8 years ago

glob() does not work if the path contains brackets "[" and "]".

For example, this will make it fail:

$files = glob("[myfolder]/*.txt");

No error is returned, just an empty array!

lesion at autistici dot org

9 years ago

Maybe all of you still know this, but it seems that if the directory contains some unresolved symlink, glob() simply ignore those files.

bimal at sanjaal dot com

3 years ago

To pick one of the file randomly from your directory with full physical path, you can write something like this:

<?php
function one_random_image_file()
{
    $files = glob('../images/*.jpg');
    shuffle($files);
    return realpath($files[0]);
}
$image_to_read = one_random_image_file();
?>

troy at troyonline dot com

5 years ago

If you have open_basedir set in php.ini to limit which files php can execute, glob(...) will return false when there are no matching files.  If open_basedir is not set, the very same code will return an empty array in the same situation.

This is unfortunate as a seemingly innocuous change causes different functionality that breaks code like:

foreach(glob("*.ext") as $file)
...

See this link if you have any questions as to why this is so:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=47358

josh at servebyte dot com

8 years ago

To:  martinlarsen at bigfoot dot com (14-Jun-2007 01:13)

[quote]
glob() does not work if the path contains brackets "[" and "]".

For example, this will make it fail:

$files = glob("[myfolder]/*.txt");

No error is returned, just an empty array!
[/quote]

Hi there,
if you backslash the brackets, it should work. Try:
$files = glob("\[myfolder\]/*.txt");
Hope this helps.

Anonymous

9 years ago

Reply to ny_obaATgmxDOTnet:

You could also use sql_regcase() to build a pattern for case insensitive matches.
You may also want to set the locale before, so it is used when building the pattern.

<?php

$pattern

BigueNique at yahoo dot ca

5 years ago

Here is the function array_prepend() used by my latest post of safe_glob().

<?php
/**
* Prepends $string to each element of $array
* If $deep is true, will indeed also apply to sub-arrays
* @author BigueNique AT yahoo DOT ca
* @since 080324
*/
function array_prepend($array, $string, $deep=false) {
    if(empty($array)||empty($string)) return $array;
    foreach($array as $key => $element)
        if(is_array($element))
            if($deep)
                $array[$key] = array_prepend($element,$string,$deep);
            else
                trigger_error('array_prepend: array element',E_USER_WARNING);
        else
            $array[$key] = $string.$element;
    return $array;

    }

ottodenn at gmail dot com

6 years ago

just a quick one:

get all dirs, without files:
<?php
$dirs = array_filter(glob($path.'*'), 'is_dir');
?>

sebastian dot wasser at gmail dot com

8 days ago

I created a rglob function to support a '/**/' wildcard. You can even set the order to post-order or pre-order traversal.

<?phpfunction rglob ($pattern, $flags = 0, $traversePostOrder = false) {
    // Keep away the hassles of the rest if we don't use the wildcard anyway
    if (strpos($pattern, '/**/') === false) {
        return glob($pattern, $flags);
    }$patternParts = explode('/**/', $pattern);// Get sub dirs
    $dirs = glob(array_shift($patternParts) . '/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR | GLOB_NOSORT);// Get files for current dir
    $files = glob($pattern, $flags);

    foreach (

roland at rd-creation dot fr

2 months ago

FIX to use GLOB_BRACE pattern in glob_recursive function submitted by Mike

if (! function_exists('glob_recursive')){
    function glob_recursive($pattern, $flags = 0, $startdir = ''){
        $files = glob($startdir.$pattern, $flags);
        foreach (glob($startdir.'*', GLOB_ONLYDIR|GLOB_NOSORT|GLOB_MARK) as $dir){
            $files = array_merge($files, glob_recursive($pattern, $flags, $dir));
        }
        return $files;
    }
}

Anxiety35 at gmail dot com

1 year ago

After fiddling with GLOB_BRACE a bunch, I have found the most items that can be included in the braces is about 10 before glob no longer returns any matches.

I have a scenario where there can be a thousand or more files to check for where I can't pattern match and need to check specific names. I was hoping to batch them in large groups to see if it would help performance. However, if I include more than 10 in a GLOB_BRACE the function will return FALSE.

mkas at destiny dot lt

4 years ago

recursive file search

<?php
$path[] = 'starting_place/*';

while(

sven at NOSPAM dot sven dot globalunix dot org

6 years ago

If you want to use wildcard expressions (like they are used by glob() ) to search on strings, you can use this function:

<?php   
function match_wildcard( $wildcard_pattern, $haystack ) {
   $regex = str_replace(
     array("\*", "\?"), // wildcard chars
     array('.*','.'),   // regexp chars
     preg_quote($wildcard_pattern)
   );

   return

eric at muyser dot com

8 years ago

As a follow up to recursively determining all paths (by viajy at yoyo dot org) and opendir being faster than glob (by Sam Yong - hellclanner at live [dot] com).

The list all dirs code didn't seem to work, at least on my server (provided by parazuce [at] gmail [dot] com).

I needed a function to create an unlimited multidimensional array, with the names of the folders/files intact (no realpath's, although that is easily possible). This is so I can simply loop through the array, create an expandable link on the folder name, with all the files inside it.

This is the correct way to recurse I believe (no static, return small arrays to build up the multidimensional array), and includes a check for files/folders beginning with dots.

// may need modifications

function list_files($path)
{
    $files = array();

        if(is_dir($path))
    {
        if($handle = opendir($path))
        {
            while(($name = readdir($handle)) !== false)
            {
                if(!preg_match("#^\.#", $name))
                if(is_dir($path . "/" . $name))
                {
                    $files[$name] = list_files($path . "/" . $name);
                }
                else
                {
                    $files[] = $name;
                }
            }

                        closedir($handle);
        }
    }

    return $files;
}

print_r(list_files("/path/to/folder"));

// example usage

function list_html($list)
{
    $html = "";

        foreach($list as $folder => $file)
    {
        if(is_array($list[$folder]))
        {
            $html .= "> (folder) " . $folder . "<br>";
            $html .= list_html($list[$folder]);
        }
        else
        {
            $html .= " (file) " . $file . "<br>";
        }
    }

        return $html;
}

echo list_html(list_files("/path/to/folder"));

guilleva at gmail dot com

9 years ago

In some systems (AIX for example) GLOB_BRACE isn't defined and you get the error:
glob() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in /XX/XX.php

<?

foreach (glob("{*.pdf,*.PDF}",GLOB_BRACE ) as $filename) {
      echo "$filename \n";
}

?>

The method may help you in this case.

<?

foreach (array_merge(glob("*.pdf"),glob("*.PDF")) as $filename) {
      echo "$filename \n";
}

?>

sean at syosoft dot com

8 years ago

Run your directory + "file pattern" through preg_quote to get around [ ] / etc issues...glob uses pattern matching.

okumurya at hotmail dot com

9 years ago

4.3.8 and 4.4.2 has incompatible behavior.
If there is no glob result, 4.4.2 return empty array but 4.3.8 returns FALSE.

code:
<?php
$a = glob('hoge');
var_dump($a);
?>

result at 4.3.8:
bool(false)

result at 4.4.2:
array(0) {
}

Sam Yong - hellclanner at live [dot] com

8 years ago

An alternative to this glob function. Like what edogs [at] dogsempire.com said, opendir should be faster than glob. I have not tested timing for this function but it works perfectly for me on my PHP v5.2.2 server.

<?php

$_foo

nataxia at gmail dot com

8 years ago

Something I used to sort dir & subdir into array (multidimensional) reflecting dir structure.

    function getRecursiveFolderList($curDir,$currentA=false)
      {                   
        $dirs = glob($curDir . '/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR);

                $cur = 0;
        foreach($dirs as $dir)
          {
            $currentA[$cur]['path'] = $dir;
            $currentA[$cur] = $this->getRecursiveFolderList($dir,$currentA[$cur]);

                            ++$cur;
          }

        return $currentA;
      }

viajy at yoyo dot org

9 years ago

this is a recursive function i wrote to return an array of all subdirectories of a dir

function listdirs($dir) {
    static $alldirs = array();
    $dirs = glob($dir . '/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR);
    if (count($dirs) > 0) {
        foreach ($dirs as $d) $alldirs[] = $d;
    }
    foreach ($dirs as $dir) listdirs($dir);
    return $alldirs;
}

example:
print_r(listdirs('/some/path'));

torch at torchsdomain dot com

9 years ago

Here is simple function that will find and remove all files (except "." ones) that match the expression ($match, "*" as wildcard) under starting directory ($path) and all other directories under it.

function rfr($path,$match){
   static $deld = 0, $dsize = 0;
   $dirs = glob($path."*");
   $files = glob($path.$match);
   foreach($files as $file){
      if(is_file($file)){
         $dsize += filesize($file);
         unlink($file);
         $deld++;
      }
   }
   foreach($dirs as $dir){
      if(is_dir($dir)){
         $dir = basename($dir) . "/";
         rfr($path.$dir,$match);
      }
   }
   return "$deld files deleted with a total size of $dsize bytes";
}

joseph dot morphy at gmail dot com

9 years ago

<?php
$html_array = glob("*.html");

function

info at urbits dot com

10 years ago

I have been working towards a CMS-type design that is both modular and quite flat. For example, included files are all one level below the installation folder.

glob() just help me get rid of a lot of opendir() hassle. I wasn't sure if the double asterix would work - but it's fine:

foreach (glob(SERVER_PATH."/*/includes/*.php") as $inc) {
   require($inc);
}

management at twilightus dot net

9 years ago

I was making a directory filesize function but found there's a slight difference between glob and readdir in terms of getting sizes.

<?php
function dirsize_glob($dir)
{
    $size = 0;
    $dir .= (!ereg('/$', $dir)) ? '/' : '';

    foreach (

Anonymous

11 years ago

Be aware...

On Windows you need to add "/" mark:
<?php
$files = glob("/dir/*.txt"); // Works properly.
$files = glob("dir/*.txt"); // Failure!, first letter is missing on every filename!
?>

On Unix you cant add the "/" mark:
<?php
$files = glob("dir/*.txt"); // Works properly.
$files = glob("/dir/*.txt"); // No files found!
?>

Hope this will save your time :)

admiral [at] nuclearpixel [dot] com

10 years ago

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(!

Jacob Eisenberg

10 years ago

Note that on Windows, glob distinguishes between uppercase and lowercase extensions, so if the directory contains a file "test.txt" and you glob for "*.TXT" then the file will not be found!
That bug only happens when you use patterns containing "*", like the example above. If you for example search for the full filename "test.TXT" then everything works correctly.

DMan

10 years ago

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 whateverforeach (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.

x_terminat_or_3 at yahoo dot country:fr

10 years ago

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

Deviant

11 years ago

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. :

<?phpfunction 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

fraggy(AT)chello.nl

11 years ago

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...

tmm at aon dot at

13 years ago

I have written my own function for searching files, but it only supports ? and *
However it should be easily expandable.

<?php
// e.g. $matches=GetMachingFiles(GetContents("."),"*.txt");
function GetMatchingFiles($files, $search) { // Split to name and filetype
    if(strpos($search,".")) {
      $baseexp=substr($search,0,strpos($search,"."));
      $typeexp=substr($search,strpos($search,".")+1,strlen($search));
    } else {
      $baseexp=$search;
      $typeexp="";
    } // Escape all regexp Characters
    $baseexp=preg_quote($baseexp);
    $typeexp=preg_quote($typeexp); // Allow ? and *
    $baseexp=str_replace(array("\*","\?"), array(".*","."), $baseexp);
    $typeexp=str_replace(array("\*","\?"), array(".*","."), $typeexp); // Search for Matches
    $i=0;
    foreach($files as $file) {
      $filename=basename($file);

              if(

sthomas at townnews dot com

13 years ago

<?php
/**
* Recursive version of glob
*
* @return array containing all pattern-matched files.
*
* @param string $sDir      Directory to start with.
* @param string $sPattern  Pattern to glob for.
* @param int $nFlags       Flags sent to glob.
*/
function globr($sDir, $sPattern, $nFlags = NULL)
{
  $sDir = escapeshellcmd($sDir); // Get the list of all matching files currently in the
  // directory. $aFiles = glob("$sDir/$sPattern", $nFlags); // Then get a list of all directories in this directory, and
  // run ourselves on the resulting array.  This is the
  // recursion step, which will not execute if there are no
  // directories. foreach (glob("$sDir/*", GLOB_ONLYDIR) as $sSubDir)
  {
    $aSubFiles = rglob($sSubDir, $sPattern, $nFlags);
   $aFiles = array_merge($aFiles, $aSubFiles);
  } // The array we return contains the files we found, and the
  // files all of our children found. return $aFiles;
} ?>

MichaelSoft

12 years ago

Note that, in some configurations, the search is case-sensitive! You'll need to have something like:

<?php
$images = glob("/path/to/images/{*.jpg,*.JPG}", GLOB_BRACE);
?>

Also on some servers, I have seen such scripts 'crash' with an CGI Error ("...not returning a complete set of HTTP headers...") when glob could not find any match!

Michael T. McGrew

10 years ago

Take all file names in the directory and put them in a link.
<?php
foreach (glob("*.*") as $filename)
{
   echo "<a href=\"".$filename."\">".$filename."</a><br/>";
}
?>

cjcommunications at gmail dot com

11 years ago

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>";
    }
}

edogs [at] dogsempire.com

10 years ago

funny enough, but our testing opendir VS glob

show advantage of opendir by speed

0.00115704536438
and
0.0068039894104

or if to pass 200 times
0.210277080536
vs
1.2976038456

cgamedude at yahoo dot com

10 years ago

Here is the *correct* way to do a reverse-alphabetical search:
<?
$Results = glob( 'blah.*' );
rsort( $Results );
?>
There now, wasn't that easy? :)

vidmantas dot norkus at neo dot lt

7 years ago

My version of recursive glob
<?php
function all_files($dir)
{
    $files = Array();
    $file_tmp= glob($dir.'*',GLOB_MARK | GLOB_NOSORT);

    foreach(

ryan at wonko dot com

12 years ago

Here's an example of how to use the GLOB_BRACE flag:

<?php
$images = glob("/path/to/images/{*.gif,*.jpg,*.png}", GLOB_BRACE);
?>

It's also worth noting that when using the GLOB_BRACE flag in any version of PHP prior to 4.3.4, PHP will crash if no matches are found.

martin dot rode at zeroscale dot com

13 years ago

If you don't have PHP >= 4.3 available and don't want to hassle with PHP (:-) do something like this on GNU/Linux:

<?php
foreach (explode("\n",`find -type d -maxdepth 1 ! -name ".*" -printf "%f\n" `) as $dirname) {
    print $dirname;
}
?>

With the "find" you can "glob" whatever you like.