dir

Synopsis

Returns

Resource pointer on success; FALSE for other cases

Description

dir() is a pseudo-object-oriented wrapper for all the directory functions that work with directory streams. It is certainly one of PHP's oddball functions - an early experiment in implementing object-oriented features for PHP. (See the notes for an anecdote from Jim Winstead, the author of the function.)

When the function is called, it opens a directory stream to directory dir and returns an object. When the directory stream is opened, a resource pointer for the stream is created. This pointer is stored as a class property called handle and the pathname of the directory is stored as a class property called path . In addition to these properties, the object contains three methods called read() , rewind() , and close() . These methods are wrappers for the readdir() , rewinddir() , and closedir() functions, and behave in a similar fashion. The methods require no arguments and are called using the following syntax:

$object_name->method_name ();

The function returns FALSE if the open_basedir configuration directive is set and directory dir is not below the directory specified in open_basedir. The function also returns FALSE if a directory stream for directory dir could not be opened.

Version

From versions 3.0 and 4.0

Example

// For PHP3, use: $directory = '.';
$directory = getcwd ();

$dir_object = @ dir ($directory)
    or die ("Could not open a directory stream for <i>$directory</i>");

// Display information about the directory stream
// print_r() was introduced in PHP 4
print_r ($dir_object);

while ($entry = $dir_object->read ()) {
       print "<br />$entry";
}
$dir_object->close ();