How can PHP developers efficiently count and manage files within a directory, especially when organizing data for pagination or navigation purposes?

When counting and managing files within a directory in PHP, developers can use functions like `scandir()` to retrieve a list of files, `count()` to get the total number of files, and implement pagination or navigation by limiting the number of files displayed per page. By organizing the data efficiently, developers can improve the user experience and performance of their applications.

// Get the list of files in a directory
$files = scandir('/path/to/directory');

// Remove . and .. from the list
$files = array_diff($files, array('.', '..'));

// Count the total number of files
$totalFiles = count($files);

// Implement pagination by displaying a subset of files per page
$perPage = 10;
$page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : 1;
$start = ($page - 1) * $perPage;
$subset = array_slice($files, $start, $perPage);

// Display the files in the subset
foreach ($subset as $file) {
    echo $file . "<br>";
}

// Display pagination links
$totalPages = ceil($totalFiles / $perPage);
for ($i = 1; $i <= $totalPages; $i++) {
    echo '<a href="?page=' . $i . '">' . $i . '</a> ';
}