PHP Scandir returns extra periods

Question

So I am trying to build a script that scans a directory and returns random images to be used as backgrounds.

The php looks like this:

$dir = \"views         


        

Answer 1

'.' and '..' are returned for current and parent directory. You can filter them:

while (false !== ($filename = readdir($dh))) {
    if ($filename != '.' && $filename != '..')    
        $files[] = $filename;
}

Answer 2

Why not use regex? That way it captures any amount of periods. (i.e. ".", "..", "..." etc..)

while (false !== ($filename = readdir($dh))) {
        if(!preg_match('/^\.*$/',$filename)){
            $files[] = $filename;
        }

Answer 3

$dh = opendir("c:\");
while (false !== ($filename = readdir($dh))) {
    if ($filename != '.' && $filename != '..')    
       $files[] = $filename;
}

Answer 4

Use glob() so you can filter the files.

$files = glob('views/img/bg/*.jpg');
$random = $files[array_rand($files)];

Since you're specifying *.jpg, $files contains only JPG files and you don't need to remove the . and .. items.