glob in PHP

glob — Find pathnames matching a pattern
Syntax:

array glob ( string $pattern [, int $flags = 0 ] )
The glob() function searches for all the pathnames matching pattern according to the rules used by the libc glob() function, which is similar to the rules used by common shells.

Parameters:

pattern
The pattern. No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done.

flags
Valid flags:

GLOB_MARK - Adds a slash to each directory returned
GLOB_NOSORT - Return files as they appear in the directory (no sorting). When this flag is not used, the pathnames are sorted alphabetically
GLOB_NOCHECK - Return the search pattern if no files matching it were found
GLOB_NOESCAPE - Backslashes do not quote metacharacters
GLOB_BRACE - Expands {a,b,c} to match 'a', 'b', or 'c'
GLOB_ONLYDIR - Return only directory entries which match the pattern
GLOB_ERR - Stop on read errors (like unreadable directories), by default errors are ignored.
Return values: Returns an array containing the matched files/directories, an empty array if no file matched or FALSE on error.

Note:
On some systems it is impossible to distinguish between empty match and an error.
Changelog ¶

Version Description
5.1.0 GLOB_ERR was added


Example #1 Convenient way how glob() can replace opendir() and friends.

<?php
foreach (glob("*.txt") as $filename) {
    echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "\n";
}
?>
The above example will output something similar to:

funclist.txt size 44686
funcsummary.txt size 267625
quickref.txt size 137820


Note: This function will not work on remote files as the file to be examined must be accessible via the server's filesystem.
Note: This function isn't available on some systems (e.g. old Sun OS).
Note: The GLOB_BRACE flag is not available on some non GNU systems, like Solaris.