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glob

(PHP 4 >= 4.3.0, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

glob — Find pathnames matching a pattern

Description

glob(string $pattern, int $flags = 0): array|false

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.

The behavior on Unix systems and macOS is determined by the system's implementation of glob(). On Windows, an implementation that conforms to the POSIX 1003.2 definition for glob() is used, and it includes an extension to handle the [!...] convention for negating a range.

Parameters

pattern

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

Special characters:

  • * - Matches zero or more characters.
  • ? - Matches exactly one character (any character).
  • [...] - Matches one character from a group of characters. If the first character is !, matches any character not in the group.
  • {a,b,c} - Matches one string from a group of strings delimited by a comma when the GLOB_BRACE flag is used.
  • \ - Escapes the following character, except when the GLOB_NOESCAPE flag is used.

flags

Any of the GLOB_* constants.

Return Values

Returns an array containing the matched files/directories, an empty array if no file matched or false on error. Unless GLOB_NOSORT was used, the names will be sorted alphanumerically.

Examples

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

Example #2 Example with a more complex pattern

<?php
foreach (glob("path/*/*.{txt,md}", \GLOB_BRACE) as $filename) {
echo "$filename\n";
}
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

path/docs/mailinglist-rules.md
path/docs/README.md
path/docs/release-process.md
path/pear/install-pear.txt
path/Zend/README.md

Notes

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).

See Also