Function to check if directory exists?

[Anon]

I am writing an application that will allow a user to upload files to the web server, I want to set this up so the application creates a distinct directory each time based upon a variable identifying the set of data it contains.

The problem is that I want to be able to check if the directory already exists before trying to write it. If it does exist, than I want to simply use the directory rather than trying to create it. Right now, if the directory exists, I simply get an error from PHP stating that fact and cannot move forward.

Is there a file system function that will check to see if a directory exists, or any suggestions for a workaround if there is not?

Thanks in advance.

Alan

[[deleted]]

Well you could at least try to read the manual.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.file-exists.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.is-dir.php

[Anon]

Thanks for the relevant pointers in the manual, however, there seems to be some confusion between which would be the best method.

One person in the annotated manual commented that the file_exists() function will accomplish this task, however, there is still the is_dir() function, and in the manual no mention of using it for the purpose I described. To do so would require first it seems the ability to determine if the file exists before finding out if it is a directory. Wouldn't the is_dir() function require the file_exists function to prevent errors if the directory did not exist?

The manual did not state clearly whether the file_exists function worked for directories, there was only a mention of this from user comments. Of course to me that begs the question, might there be problems with using the file_exists() function in the way that I have described for directories since it was designed for files, or does it simply not matter?

[[deleted]]

It simply doesn't matter.

file_exits() is called file_exists() because
file_or_dir_exists() was too long.

Note: file_exists() only checks to see if there is a filesystem object with a specified name.
In unix, that can be a file, a dir or a symlink.
The is_dir() function was made to allow you to check if a filesystem object is a directory.