Re: file_exists and wildcard/regex

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 12:54 -1000, Daniel Kolbo wrote: > > Daniel Kolbo wrote: > > What is the preferred method with php to test and see if a file > > [pattern] exists? > > > > For example, i only need to search in one directory, that may have any > > number of files named such as afile1.txt, afile2.txt, afile3.txt, > > .... And also, bfile1.txt, bfile2.txt, bfile3.txt, ... > > I want to see if any such file 'family' exists. That is, i want to > > see if there is any file named bfile[1-9][0-9]+.txt. I don't care > > which bfile number exists, i just want to know if any bfile exists. > > > > I hope this is clear enough, if not let me know. > > > > thanks, > > dK > > > After some more research it seems my options are: > 1) loop through the directory contents > 2) use scandir (then search the resulting array) > 3) use glob. I am not familiar with the glob pattern library, it does > not seem like i have the full power of regex when using glob is this > correct? Also, searching the whole filesystem seems...overkill. > > What do you suggest, is there a 4th option? > thanks, > dK If you're on a Linux system, you could look at ls and the regular expressions it lets you use with it. You could exec out and get the returned results. Also, as it's a system call, it should be very speedy. Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk