What are some alternative methods to using arrays in PHP to store directory structures?

When working with directory structures in PHP, using arrays to store file paths can become inefficient and cumbersome, especially for large directories. An alternative method is to use the RecursiveDirectoryIterator class in combination with RecursiveIteratorIterator to iterate over directory structures without needing to store them in an array. 

// Using RecursiveDirectoryIterator to iterate over directory structure
$directory = '/path/to/directory';
$iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($directory));

foreach ($iterator as $file) {
    echo $file->getPathname() . PHP_EOL;
}

Keywords

file system directory iterator scandir SPL recursive iterator

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