What are the limitations of using wildcard characters with the file_exists function in PHP?

The file_exists function in PHP does not support wildcard characters such as * or ?. Therefore, you cannot use it to check for the existence of multiple files matching a pattern. To work around this limitation, you can use the glob function to search for files matching a specific pattern and then check if any files are returned. 

$files = glob('/path/to/files/*.txt');
if ($files) {
    // Files matching the pattern exist
    foreach ($files as $file) {
        echo "File exists: $file\n";
    }
} else {
    // No files matching the pattern exist
    echo "No files matching the pattern exist\n";
}

Keywords

wildcard characters file_exists function limitations PHP error types

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