tempnam in PHP

tempnam — Create file with unique file name
Syntax:

string tempnam ( string $dir , string $prefix )
Creates a file with a unique filename, with access permission set to 0600, in the specified directory. If the directory does not exist, tempnam() may generate a file in the system's temporary directory, and return the full path to that file, including its name.

Parameters:

dir
The directory where the temporary filename will be created.

prefix
The prefix of the generated temporary filename.

Note: Windows uses only the first three characters of prefix.
Return values: Returns the new temporary filename (with path), or FALSE on failure.

Changelog ¶

Version Description
4.0.3 This function's behavior changed in 4.0.3. The temporary file is also created to avoid a race condition where the file might appear in the filesystem between the time the string was generated and before the script gets around to creating the file. Note, that you need to remove the file in case you need it no more, it is not done automatically.


Example #1 tempnam() example

<?php
$tmpfname = tempnam("/tmp", "FOO");

$handle = fopen($tmpfname, "w");
fwrite($handle, "writing to tempfile");
fclose($handle);

// do here something

unlink($tmpfname);
?>


Note: If PHP cannot create a file in the specified dir parameter, it falls back on the system default. On NTFS this also happens if the specified dir contains more than 65534 files.