file_exists
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)
file_exists — Checks whether a file or directory exists
Description
$filename
) : boolChecks whether a file or directory exists.
Parameters
-
filename
-
Path to the file or directory.
On windows, use //computername/share/filename or \\computername\share\filename to check files on network shares.
Return Values
Returns TRUE
if the file or directory specified by
filename
exists; FALSE
otherwise.
Note:
This function will return
FALSE
for symlinks pointing to non-existing files.
This function returns FALSE
for files inaccessible due to safe mode restrictions. However these
files still can be included if
they are located in safe_mode_include_dir.
Note:
The check is done using the real UID/GID instead of the effective one.
Note: Because PHP's integer type is signed and many platforms use 32bit integers, some filesystem functions may return unexpected results for files which are larger than 2GB.
Examples
Example #1 Testing whether a file exists
<?php
$filename = '/path/to/foo.txt';
if (file_exists($filename)) {
echo "The file $filename exists";
} else {
echo "The file $filename does not exist";
}
?>
Notes
Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.
As of PHP 5.0.0, this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to Supported Protocols and Wrappers to determine which wrappers support stat() family of functionality.
See Also
- is_readable() - Tells whether a file exists and is readable
- is_writable() - Tells whether the filename is writable
- is_file() - Tells whether the filename is a regular file
- file() - Reads entire file into an array
English translation
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Document created the 30/01/2003, last modified the 26/10/2018
Source of the printed document:https://www.gaudry.be/en/php-rf-file-exists.html
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References
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