Filesystem Functions

Introduction

Requirements

No external libraries are needed to build this extension, but if you want PHP to support LFS (large files) on Linux, then you need to have a recent glibc and you need compile PHP with the following compiler flags: -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64.

Installation

There is no installation needed to use these functions; they are part of the PHP core.

Runtime Configuration

The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in php.ini.

**Filesystem and Streams Configuration Options**
Name	Default	Changeable	Changelog
allow_url_fopen	"1"	PHP_INI_ALL	PHP_INI_ALL in PHP <= 4.3.4. PHP_INI_SYSTEM in PHP < 6. Available since PHP 4.0.4.
allow_url_include	"0"	PHP_INI_ALL	PHP_INI_SYSTEM in PHP 5. Available since PHP 5.2.0.
user_agent	NULL	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 4.3.0.
default_socket_timeout	"60"	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 4.3.0.
from	""	PHP_INI_ALL
auto_detect_line_endings	"0"	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 4.3.0.

Here's a short explanation of the configuration directives.

allow_url_fopen boolean

This option enables the URL-aware fopen wrappers that enable accessing URL object like files. Default wrappers are provided for the access of remote files using the ftp or http protocol, some extensions like zlib may register additional wrappers.

Note: This setting can only be set in php.ini due to security reasons.

Note: This option was introduced immediately after the release of version 4.0.3. For versions up to and including 4.0.3 you can only disable this feature at compile time by using the configuration switch --disable-url-fopen-wrapper .

Warning

On Windows versions prior to PHP 4.3.0, the following functions do not support remote file accessing: include(), include_once(), require(), require_once() and the imagecreatefromXXX functions in the Image extension.

allow_url_include boolean

This option allows the use of URL-aware fopen wrappers with the following functions: include(), include_once(), require(), require_once().

Note: This setting requires allow_url_fopen to be on.

user_agent string

Define the user agent for PHP to send.

default_socket_timeout integer

Default timeout (in seconds) for socket based streams.

Note: This configuration option was introduced in PHP 4.3.0

from string

Define the anonymous ftp password (your email address).

auto_detect_line_endings boolean

When turned on, PHP will examine the data read by fgets() and file() to see if it is using Unix, MS-Dos or Macintosh line-ending conventions.

This enables PHP to interoperate with Macintosh systems, but defaults to Off, as there is a very small performance penalty when detecting the EOL conventions for the first line, and also because people using carriage-returns as item separators under Unix systems would experience non-backwards-compatible behaviour.

Note: This configuration option was introduced in PHP 4.3.0

Resource Types

Predefined Constants

The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.

GLOB_BRACE (integer)
GLOB_ONLYDIR (integer)
GLOB_MARK (integer)
GLOB_NOSORT (integer)
GLOB_NOCHECK (integer)
GLOB_NOESCAPE (integer)
PATHINFO_DIRNAME (integer)
PATHINFO_BASENAME (integer)
PATHINFO_EXTENSION (integer)
PATHINFO_FILENAME (integer): Since PHP 5.2.0.
FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH (integer): Search for filename in include_path (since PHP 5).
FILE_APPEND (integer): Append content to existing file.
FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES (integer): Strip EOL characters (since PHP 5).
FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES (integer): Skip empty lines (since PHP 5).
FILE_BINARY (integer): Binary mode (since PHP 6).
FILE_TEXT (integer): Text mode (since PHP 6).