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# glob

(PHP 4 >= 4.3.0, PHP 5)

glob -- Find pathnames matching a pattern

## Description

array glob ( string pattern [, int flags] )

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. No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done.

Returns an array containing the matched files/directories, an empty array if no file matched or `FALSE` on error.

Valid flags:

- `GLOB_MARK` - Adds a slash to each item returned

- `GLOB_NOSORT` - Return files as they appear in the directory (no sorting)

- `GLOB_NOCHECK` - Return the search pattern if no files matching it were found

- `GLOB_NOESCAPE` - Backslashes do not quote metacharacters

- `GLOB_BRACE` - Expands {a,b,c} to match 'a', 'b', or 'c'

  > Note: This flag is not available on some non GNU systems, like Solaris.

- `GLOB_ONLYDIR` - Return only directory entries which match the pattern

  > Note: Before PHP 4.3.3 `GLOB_ONLYDIR` was not available on Windows and other systems not using the GNU C library.

- `GLOB_ERR` - Stop on read errors (like unreadable directories), by default errors are ignored. Added in PHP 5.1.0.

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

> Note: This function will not work on remote files as the file to be examined must be accessible via the servers filesystem.

> Note: This function isn't available on some systems (e.g. old Sun OS).

See also opendir(), readdir(), closedir(), and fnmatch().

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