How can recursion be used in PHP to search for files in directories and subdirectories?

When searching for files in directories and subdirectories in PHP, recursion can be used to traverse through each directory and its subdirectories to find the desired files. This can be achieved by creating a recursive function that checks each item in a directory, and if it is a directory itself, calls the function recursively on that directory. This way, the function can search through all levels of directories to find the files needed.

function searchFiles($dir){
    $files = [];
    
    $items = scandir($dir);
    
    foreach($items as $item){
        if($item != '.' && $item != '..'){
            $path = $dir.'/'.$item;
            if(is_dir($path)){
                $files = array_merge($files, searchFiles($path));
            } else {
                $files[] = $path;
            }
        }
    }
    
    return $files;
}

$directory = '/path/to/directory';
$foundFiles = searchFiles($directory);

print_r($foundFiles);