What are the advantages of using a RegexIterator in PHP to filter files based on specific criteria?

When working with a large number of files, it can be useful to filter them based on specific criteria. One way to achieve this in PHP is by using a RegexIterator, which allows you to iterate over a set of files and apply a regular expression filter to include or exclude files based on their names.

// Create a RegexIterator to filter files based on a regular expression
$iterator = new RegexIterator(
    new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator('/path/to/directory')),
    '/\.txt$/i',
    RegexIterator::MATCH
);

// Iterate over the filtered files
foreach ($iterator as $file) {
    echo $file->getFilename() . "\n";
}