What are some best practices for sorting and manipulating folder contents in PHP scripts?

When working with folder contents in PHP scripts, it is important to properly sort and manipulate the files and directories for efficient processing. One best practice is to use the scandir() function to retrieve the contents of a directory and then use sorting functions like sort() or natsort() to organize the files and directories. Additionally, you can use functions like file_exists() and is_dir() to check for the existence of files and directories before manipulating them.

// Get the contents of a directory
$directory = '/path/to/directory';
$contents = scandir($directory);

// Sort the contents alphabetically
sort($contents);

// Loop through the contents and manipulate files and directories
foreach ($contents as $item) {
    if ($item != '.' && $item != '..') {
        if (is_dir($directory . '/' . $item)) {
            // Manipulate directories
        } else {
            // Manipulate files
        }
    }
}