readdir() reads nonexistent files "." and ".."

Question

I'm a basic php programmer, with a simple website with users and profile pictures.

There is a folder called ppic (profile pictures).

When I use readdir() like it says on the php.net site, it prints out two nonexistent files.

If I put a echo "there was a match - $entry<br>; inside the while loop with $entry being the file name, it prints out:

there was a match - .
there was a match - ..
there was a match - Autumn Leaves.jpg
there was a match - Creek.jpg
there was a match - Toco Toucan.jpg

I only have three files in the folder: "Autumn Leaves.jpg", "Creek.jpg", and "Toco Toucan.jpg".

I'm not too great with computers, so I have no idea what those dots mean.

Can somebody please explain these to me?

Unix operating systems maintain a directory `.` for the current directory, and `..` for the parent directory. — Joop Eggen, Oct 06 '13 at 18:18
Single dot "." stands for current directory and double dots ".." mean parent directory. This really doesn't have anything to do with PHP and is more of a Linux file system question. — j08691, Oct 06 '13 at 18:18
Why do they show up as files then? Directories aren't files. — Jonathan Lam, Oct 06 '13 at 18:19
possible duplicate of [PHP list directories and remove .. and](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2416137/php-list-directories-and-remove-and) or [Exclude Hidden Files from Scandir PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/q/8532569) — mario, Oct 06 '13 at 18:19
Every directory shows up as file. In fact it historically was a file, with as binary contents a file listing, and `..` a link. — Joop Eggen, Oct 06 '13 at 18:19
Related: [Why do directory listings contain the current (.) and parent (..) directory?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/322719/1438393) — Amal Murali, Oct 06 '13 at 18:19
Note how the documentation's example takes this into account with `if ($entry != "." && $entry != "..")` — Boaz, Oct 06 '13 at 18:20

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 06 '13 at 18:18

5

Learn UNIX basics: (and other common filesystem handlings)

The . is a virtual symbolic link to the current folder (e.g. ./Creek.jpg is, resolved, the same as Creek.jpg)

The .. is a virtual symbolic link to the parent folder.

To hide them, just manually exclude then via $file !== '.' && $file !== '..'.

answered Oct 06 '13 at 18:18

bwoebi

1

[Not only Unix-like; Windows and others use them as well.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_$computing$) – Gumbo Oct 06 '13 at 18:20
@Gumbo: I wrote Unix, not Linux……… (and mean the unixoid systems…) – bwoebi Oct 06 '13 at 18:20

1 Answers1