Page 372 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Part III: Using PHP in Practice
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This text editor has used many of the file - related functions described in the chapter, and has also
demonstrated some important concepts such as security and error handling. You can take many of these
concepts and apply them to other Web applications that you create.

Summary

In this chapter you learned how to work with files and explored PHP ’ s various file - handling functions.
You looked at:

❑ How files and directories work, and the differences between file paths on UNIX - like servers and
Windows servers
❑ Retrieving information on files using file_exists() , filesize() , fileatime() ,
filectime() , filemtime() , basename() , and dirname()
❑ Using fopen() and fclose() to open and close files for reading and writing
❑ Reading and writing to files using fread() , fwrite() , fgetc() , feof() , fgets() ,
fgetcsv() , file() , file_get_contents() , file_put_contents() , fpassthru() ,
readfile() , fseek() , ftell() , and rewind()
❑ Setting file permissions with chmod() , and checking permissions with is_readable() ,
is_writable() , and is_executable()
❑ Copying files with copy() , renaming and moving files with rename() , and deleting files with
unlink()
❑ Reading directories with opendir() , closedir() , readdir() , rewinddir() , and dir()
❑ Manipulating directories with chdir() , mkdir() , and rmdir()
❑ Testing for files and directories with is_file() and is_dir()

Along the way you learned how to use recursion to move through a directory tree, and you also built a
simple text editor to illustrate many of the functions and concepts covered in the chapter.

Some functions rarely used in Web applications weren ’ t discussed. For a full list of PHP ’ s file and
directory functions, refer to the online PHP function list at: http://www.php.net/manual/ref
.filesystem.php .

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