Sometimes when you're looking through the filesystem in your PHP application, you just need a quick and easy way to grab a file listing from a directly and move on. Sure, you can use the usual opendir and readdir combo to loop through the files, but there's another function that might suit your needs better - glob. In this quick tutorial from NETTUTS.com today they show you how it works.

Are you still using opendir() to loop through folders in PHP? Doesn’t that require a lot of repetitive code everytime you want to search a folder? Luckily, PHP’s glob() is a much smarter solution.

They include code examples showing how the usual opendir/readdir code can be translated over to an example using glob and mention the two arguments you can use - a pattern-matching search string and a modifier to change settings on the search and on the results returned.