In what situations can the glob() function be a simpler alternative to opendir(), readdir(), and while loops for listing files in a directory in PHP?

The glob() function in PHP can be a simpler alternative to opendir(), readdir(), and while loops for listing files in a directory when you only need to retrieve a list of files matching a specific pattern or wildcard. This can be useful when you want to quickly list all files with a certain extension or prefix without the need for manual iteration through the directory contents.

// Using glob() to list all .txt files in a directory
$files = glob('path/to/directory/*.txt');
foreach ($files as $file) {
    echo $file . PHP_EOL;
}