searching names of files in a directory.

Anon

I have a directory full with data files. How do I make PHP search a particular data file based on its name?

What functions must I have present? or more or less how should i do this?

Anon

This should help you out:

$dir = @opendir("/mydirectory") or die("Error opening directory");

while ( $dir_name = readdir($dir) ) {
if ( $dir_name == "somename" ) {

print "i found your directory!";
}
}

the @ in front of opendir will suppress PHP error messages (if there are any). if you'd like to see the errors, just remove the @.

-Jim Keller
http://www.centerfuse.net

Anon

Thank You Jim..

But I have a doubt when adding an else in the script..

I think iam not doing it correctly... when I do this:

$dir = @opendir("xxxxxx") or die("Error opening directory");

while ( $dir_name = readdir($dir) ) {
if ( $dir_name == "foo" ) {
print "i found your directory!";
}
else { print "Direc not found"; }
}

This is what prints back:
"Direc not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not foundDirec not found "

Its the same msg when the dir searched is found. You have an idea of why PHP is doing this? Or what is the correct way?

Thanks.

By the way.. youre a Perl migrator
right? =)

Anon

Its the same msg when the dir searched is found.

while ( $dir_name = readdir($dir) ) {
if ( $dir_name == "foo" ) {
print "i found your directory!";
}
else { print "Direc not found"; }
}

That's your loop. The If-else statement is inside the loop. So everytime the loop iterates, and it's not "foo", then it's going to print "Direc not found". Consider this:

$i = 0;
while ($i < 5) {
print "Direc not found";
$i++;
}

That'll print "Direc not found" 5 times. And that's what you're doing in your loop, except that your print statement is inside an if-else statement.

To correct it, do something like this:

$found = false;
while ( $dir_name = readdir($dir) ) {
if ( $dir_name == "foo" ) {
$found = true;
}
}

if ($found)
print "Direc found";
} else {
print "Direc not found";
}

Diego

Anon

Sorry, forgot the break. It doesn't make a difference, but your code will be slightly faster if the directory exists.

$found = false;
while ( $dir_name = readdir($dir) ) {
if ( $dir_name == "foo" ) {
$found = true;
break;
}
}

if ($found)
print "Direc found";
} else {
print "Direc not found";
}

jim_keller

Diego is correct - your if/else statements within the while loop are set up so that it will print "Direc not found" once for each directory that is not named "foo". This because it is within the while loop. His method will work, and using break to exit the function once the "foo" directory is found is also a good idea:

$found = 0;

$dir = @opendir("/mydir") or die("Error opening directory");

while ( $dir_name = readdir($dir) ) {
if ( $dir_name == "foo" ) {
$found = 1;
break;
}
}

if ( $found ) { echo "Your directory was found."; }
else { echo "Your Directory was NOT found."; }

Also, yes - i am from a perl background - did using die() instead of exit() give me away? 🙂

jim_keller

oops... "...break to exit the function" should read "break to exit the LOOP" 🙂