PHP Manual: Return an instance of the Directory class

Description

Directoryfalse dir(string $directory, resourcenull $context = null)

A pseudo-object-oriented mechanism for reading a directory. The given directory is opened.

Parameters

directory: Directory to open
context: A context stream resource.

Return Values

Returns an instance of Directory, or false in case of error.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.0.0	`context` is now nullable.

Examples

Example #1 dir example

Please note the fashion in which Directory::read's return value is checked in the example below. We are explicitly testing whether the return value is identical to (equal to and of the same type as - see Comparison Operators for more information) false since otherwise, any directory entry whose name evaluates to false will stop the loop.

<?php
$d = dir("/etc/php5");
echo "Handle: " . $d->handle . "\n";
echo "Path: " . $d->path . "\n";
while (false !== ($entry = $d->read())) {
   echo $entry."\n";
}
$d->close();
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Handle: Resource id #2
Path: /etc/php5
.
..
apache
cgi
cli

Notes

Note:
The order in which directory entries are returned by the read method is system-dependent.