Page 356 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Part III: Using PHP in Practice
You can see that the returned filenames are not sorted in any way. To sort them, first read the entries
into an array:

$filenames = array();
while ( $file = readdir( $handle ) ) $filenames[] = $file;
closedir( $handle );

The $filenames array now contains every entry in the directory. Now you can call sort() to arrange
the array elements in ascending order, then loop through the array displaying all except the “.” and
“..” entries:

sort( $filenames );

foreach ( $filenames as $file ) {
if ( $file != “.” && $file != “..” ) {
echo “<li>$file</li>“;
}
}

Other Directory Functions
Just as with files, PHP provides a range of ways to manipulate directories, including the following
functions:
❑ rewinddir() — Moves the directory pointer back to the start of the list of entries

❑ chdir() — Changes the current directory

❑ mkdir() — Creates a directory

❑ rmdir() — Deletes a directory

❑ dirname() — Returns the directory portion of a path

Resetting the Directory Pointer
The rewinddir() function resets PHP ’ s internal pointer back to the first entry in a given directory. This
function is the directory counterpart to the rewind() function for files. To use rewinddir() , pass an
open directory handle to it, as follows:

rewinddir( $handle );

Changing the Current Directory
The chdir() function call changes the current directory to a new directory:

chdir( “/home/matt/myfolder” );

318

9/21/09 9:10:18 AM
c11.indd 318
c11.indd 318 9/21/09 9:10:18 AM