Is There A Way To glob() Only Files?

Question

I know that glob can look for all files or only all directories inside a folder :

echo "All files:\n";
$all = glob("/*");
var_dump($all);

echo "Only directories\n";
$dirs = glob("/*", GLOB_ONLYDIR);
var_dump($dirs);

But I didn't found something to find only files in a single line efficiently.

$files = array_diff(glob("/*"), glob("/*", GLOB_ONLYDIR));

Works well but reads directory twice (even if there are some optimizations that make the second browsing quicker).

Answer 1

I finally found a solution :

echo "Only files\n";
$files = array_filter(glob("/*"), 'is_file');
var_dump($files);

But take care, array_filter will preserve numeric keys : use array_values if you need to reindex the array.

Answer 2

You can use GLOB_BRACE to match documents against a list of known file extensions:

$files = glob("/path/to/directory/*.{jpg,gif,png,html,htm,php,ini}", GLOB_BRACE);

see: http://www.electrictoolbox.com/php-glob-find-files/

Answer 3

There is an easier way, just one line:

$files = glob("/path/to/directory/*.{*}", GLOB_BRACE);

the {*} means all file endings, so every file, but no folder!

Answer 4

10% faster compared to the solution of @AlainTiemblo, because it does not use an additional is_file check:

$files = array_filter(glob("/*", GLOB_MARK), function($path){ return $path[ strlen($path) - 1 ] != '/'; });

Instead it uses the inbuild GLOB_MARK flag to add a slash to each directory and by that we are able to remove those entries through array_filter() and an anonymous function.

Since PHP 7.1.0 supports Negative numeric indices you can use this instead, too:

$files = array_filter(glob("/*", GLOB_MARK), function($path){return $path[-1] != '/';});

No relevant speed gain, but it helps avoiding the vertical scrollbar in this post ^^

As array_filter() preserve the keys you should consider re-indexing the array with array_values() afterwards:

$files = array_values($files);

Answer 5

Invert regexp do the job.

preg_grep(
    ';^.*(\\\\|/)$;',
    glob("/*", GLOB_MARK),
    PREG_GREP_INVERT
);

\\\\ is for Windows backslash 🤯🔫

Answer 6

This worked for me. if this helps anyone.

for file_name in glob.glob('**/*', recursive=True):
    # we get all files and dirs
    if os.path.isfile(file_name):
        # we have only the files

Answer 7

$all = glob("/*.*");

this will list everything with a "." after the file name. so basically, all files.