filetype

holdoffhunger at gmail dot com (2012-04-05 19:23:49)

Something you may eventually want to do is to know the type of file simply by the suffix of the filename.  Functions like finfo_file and mime_ content_ type come close, but they don't actually list the filename suffix (like "txt" for "readme.txt"), and this filetype function seems to list "directory" or "file" only.

Knowing the filename suffix can be very useful, especially when managing a filesystem that has copies.  It's better to name the copy of a file as "readme(copy-1).txt" rather than "readme.txt(copy-1)", since the latter option probably isn't going to cooperate so well with your text editor/reader.  Here's a little code below that returns the suffix of a filename in a string.  It returns both the prefix and the suffix of the filename :

<?php

        // Example Filename: "Homepage.php"
        // ------------------------------------

    $file_name = "Homepage.php";

        // Filename Data
        // ------------------------------------

    $length_of_filename = strlen($file_name);
    $last_char = substr($file_name, $length_of_filename - 1, 1);

        // Parse Filename Backwards
        // ------------------------------------
    
    for($i_parse_name = 0; $i_parse_name < $length_of_filename; $i_parse_name++)
    {

            // Gather Data and Detect
            // ------------------------------------
        
        $last_char = substr($file_name, $length_of_filename - $i_parse_name + 2, 1);
        
        if($last_char == ".")
        {
            $filename_suffix = substr($file_name, $length_of_filename - $i_parse_name + 2, $i_parse_name);
            $filename_prefix = substr($file_name, 0, $length_of_filename - strlen($filename_suffix));
            $i_parse_name = $length_of_filename;
        }
    }
    
        // Print Results
        // ------------------------------------
                
    print("Filetype Results -- $filename_prefix ||| $filename_suffix");

        // Example Results:
        // ------------------------------------
        //    Filetype Results -- Homepage ||| .php

?>

Other examples:

"Best.Page.in.the.Universe.xml"
    Filetype Results -- Best.Page.in.the.Universe ||| .xml

"Best.Page.in.the.Universe.xml5789"
    Filetype Results -- Best.Page.in.the.Universe ||| .xml5789

"Home.awesome.page.php"
    Filetype Results -- Home.awesome.page ||| .php

Abhi Jain (2011-06-08 00:01:12)

Putting @ in front of the filetype() function does not prevent it from raising a warning (Lstat failed), if E_WARNING is enabled on your error_reporting.
The most common cause of filetype() raising this warning and not showing a filetype() in the output (it actually returns NULL) is, if you happened to pass just the 'Dir or File Name' and not the complete "Absolute or Relative Path" to that 'file or Dir'. It may still read that file and return its filetype as "file" but for Dir's it shows warning and outputs NULL.
eg:
$pathToFile = '/var/www';
$file = 'test.php';
$dir = 'somedir';
Output for filetype($file) will be returned as 'file' and possibly without any warning, but for filetype($dir), it will return NULL with the warning "Lstat failed", unless you pass a complete path to that dir, i.e. filetype($pathToFile.'/'.$dir).
This happened to me and found this solution after a lot of trial and error. Thought, it might help someone.

adlerweb (2010-10-07 13:09:34)

filetype() does not work for files >=2GB on x86 Linux. You can use stat as a workarround:
$type=trim(`stat -c%F $file`);
Note that stat returns diffenerent strings ("regular file","directory",...)

7r6ivyeo at mail dot com (2008-11-21 17:29:09)

I use the CLI version of PHP on Windows Vista.  Here's how to determine if a file is marked "hidden" by NTFS:

<?php
function is_hidden_file($fn) {

    $attr = trim(exec('FOR %A IN ("'.$fn.'") DO @ECHO %~aA'));

    if($attr[3] === 'h')
        return true;

    return false;
}
?>

Changing <?php if($attr[3] === 'h') ?> to <?php if($attr[4] === 's') ?> will check for system files.

This should work on any Windows OS that provides DOS shell commands.

ruach at chpc dot utah dot edu (2004-03-10 17:11:22)

There are 7 values that can be returned. Here is a list of them and what each one means
block: block special device
char: character special device
dir: directory
fifo: FIFO (named pipe)
file: regular file
link: symbolic link
unknown: unknown file type