Finding a file with a specific name with any extension

Question

Please note that I want the compartment number to change.

<?php
    $compartment = "1";

        /* HERE I NEED SOME SCRIPT TO FIND THE EXTENSION OF THE FILE NAME $compartment AND TO SAVE THAT AS A VARIABLE NAMED 'EXTENSION'.*/

    if (file_exists($compartment.$extension)) {
        echo "$compartment.$extension exists!
    } else {
        echo "No file name exists that is called $compartment. Regardless of extension."
    }
?>


<?php
    $compartment = "2";

        /* HERE I NEED SOME SCRIPT TO FIND THE EXTENSION OF THE FILE NAME $compartment AND TO SAVE THAT AS A VARIABLE NAMED 'EXTENSION'.*/

    if (file_exists($$compartment.$extension)) {
        echo "$compartment.$extension exists!
    } else {
        echo "No file name exists that is called $compartment. Regardless of extension."
    }
?>

Thank You!

And what do you expect the find to do? Search in just 1 specific folder or search in all folders starting from a specific one? Does a partial match qualify or should the complete filename match? Anyways, you might want to check the [opendir](http://www.php.net/opendir) and [readdir](http://www.php.net/readdir) functions in the PHP reference — wimvds, Jul 08 '10 at 09:30
The will only be one file with that name, so I need not worry about multiple matches. Partial matches should not be returned. I.e. I want to return 1 and 13 separately. — Andy Cheeseman, Jul 08 '10 at 10:44

Pekka · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-08T09:35:40.023

28

You need glob().

$compartment = "2";

$files = glob("/path/to/files/$compartment.*"); // Will find 2.txt, 2.php, 2.gif

// Process through each file in the list
// and output its extension
if (count($files) > 0)
foreach ($files as $file)
 {
    $info = pathinfo($file);
    echo "File found: extension ".$info["extension"]."<br>";
 }
 else
  echo "No file name exists called $compartment. Regardless of extension."

by the way, what you are doing above is crying for a loop. Don' repeat your code blocks, but wrap one of them into this:

 $compartments = array(1, 3, 6, 9); // or whichever compartments 
                                    // you wish to run through

 foreach ($compartments as $compartment)
  {
   ..... insert code here .......
  }

edited Jul 08 '10 at 09:35

answered Jul 08 '10 at 09:29

Pekka

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Thanks. I will need to reference the 'recovered' file a couple of time within the code. Will this be a problem? – Andy Cheeseman Jul 08 '10 at 10:46
@Andy no, as long as you're doing it inside the `foreach $files as $file` loop. (You can also use the variable outside of it but then you have to pick which one.) – Pekka Jul 08 '10 at 10:47

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 03 '20 at 20:01

5

Look up:

glob — Find pathnames matching a pattern
fnmatch — Match filename against a pattern
pathinfo — Returns information about a file path

edited Jan 03 '20 at 20:01

w3spi

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answered Jul 08 '10 at 09:31

Gordon

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Finding a file with a specific name with any extension

2 Answers2

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