How can the use of symbolic links, like mklink, be a workaround for accessing directories with whitespaces in PHP?

When dealing with directories containing whitespaces in PHP, it can be challenging to access them directly due to the way PHP interprets file paths. One workaround is to create symbolic links using the mklink command in the command prompt, which allows you to create a link with a simplified path that PHP can understand. By creating a symbolic link to the directory with whitespaces, you can then access it in PHP using the simplified path.

// Create a symbolic link to the directory with whitespaces
exec('mklink /d C:\path\to\directory_without_whitespaces C:\path\to\directory\with whitespaces');

// Access the directory using the symbolic link
$files = scandir('C:\path\to\directory_without_whitespaces');
foreach($files as $file) {
    echo $file . PHP_EOL;
}