How can opendir and readdir functions in PHP be utilized to read directory contents effectively?

To effectively read directory contents in PHP, you can use the opendir and readdir functions. opendir opens a directory handle, while readdir reads the contents of the directory one by one. By using a loop with readdir, you can iterate through all the files and directories within a specified directory.

$dir = "/path/to/directory";

if (is_dir($dir)) {
    if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
        while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
            echo "filename: " . $file . "<br>";
        }
        closedir($dh);
    }
}