Checks whether a file or directory exists (original) (raw)

file_exists

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

file_exists — Checks whether a file or directory exists

Description

file_exists ( string $filename ) : bool

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 byfilename exists; FALSE otherwise.

Note:

This function will return FALSE for symlinks pointing to non-existing files.

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";
}
?> `

Errors/Exceptions

Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.

Notes

Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.

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