ls *.dat

[adunphy]

I need to parse all the *.dat files in a directory. I think I need to use opendir...but how do I get only certain files?

[YappyDog]

I don't think you can weed them out beforehand, but you can certainly use an if statement to only process the .dat files. Something like this should work......

$handle = opendir("$MyDir");
while ($file = readdir($handle)) {
if(is_file("$MyDir/$file") && stristr($file,".dat") ) {
// do stuff with this .dat file

$fullname = "$MyDir/$file";
}
}
closedir($handle);

[jsim]

if(is_file("$MyDir/$file") && stristr($file,".dat") ) {

will found also files as "123.date", "123.dat.txt", etc.
this one correct this little mistake:

if(is_file("$MyDir/$file") && (strcasecmp(substr($file,-4),".dat")==0) ) {

If you using PHP 4.3 or above you can use glob() function:

foreach (glob("*.dat") as $filename) {
    echo $filename."<br>\n";
}