PHP glob

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the PHP glob() function to get the list of files and directories that match a pattern.

Introduction to the PHP glob() function #

The glob() function finds pathnames that match a pattern.

Here’s the syntax of the glob() function:

glob ( string $pattern , int $flags = 0 ) : array|falseCode language: PHP (php)

The glob() function takes two parameters:

The $pattern is the pattern to match. To construct a pattern, you use the following special characters:

• Use * to match zero or more characters
• Use - to match exactly one character
• Use [] to match one character from a group of characters listed in the []. To negate the matching, you use the ! character as the first character in the group.
• Use \ to escape the following characters, except when the GLOB_NOESCAPE flag is set.

The $flag is one or more options that determine the behavior of the glob() function.

For example, if the $flag is GLOB_MARK, the glob() function adds a slash (/) or backslash (\) to each matching directory. For a complete list of valid flags, check the glob() function documentation.

To combine flags, you use the | character. For example: GLOB_ONLYDIR|GLOB_NOSORT.

The glob() function returns an array that contains the matched files/directories.

If no files or directories match the pattern, the glob() function returns an empty array.

If an error occurs, the glob() function returns an false.

PHP glob() function examples #

Let’s take some examples of using the PHP glob() function.

1) Using the PHP glob() function to list all files in a directory #

The following example uses the glob() funtion to list all *.php file in the src directory:

<?php

$path = 'src/*.php';

$filenames = glob($path);

foreach ($filenames as $filename) {
    echo $filename . '<br>';
}Code language: PHP (php)

In this example, the pattern *.php matches any file whose extension is php.

2) Using the PHP glob() function to calculate get the total size of files #

To get the total size of files in a directory which match a pattern, you use these steps:

• First, find the matching files using the glob() function.
• Second, get the size of each file by passing the result of the glob() function to the array_map() function.
• Third, get the total size by passing the result of the array_map() to the array_sum() function.

The following code illustrates how to use the glob(), array_map(), and array_sum() function to find the total size of the *.php files in the src directory:

echo array_sum(array_map('filesize', glob('./src/*.php')));Code language: PHP (php)

3) Using the PHP glob() function to include the dotfiles #

The glob(‘*’) ignores hidden files by default. This means that it doesn’t return the file whose name starts with a dot e.g., (.gitignore), which are known as dotfiles.

If you want to match the dotfiles, you can use the {.[!.],}* as the pattern with the GLOB_BRACE flag. This pattern excludes the directories . and ..:

$filenames = glob('{.[!.],}*', GLOB_BRACE); 
foreach ($filenames as $filename) {
    echo $filename . '<br>';
}Code language: PHP (php)

Summary #

• Use the PHP glob() function to get a list of files and directories that match a pattern.