PHP in a Nutshell

Checking Whether a File Exists

The act of checking whether a file exists is one of the most basic file-related tasks you'll want to do, and file_exists() makes it as easy as it should be. Specify the filename to check as the only parameter, and it returns true if the file exists and false otherwise. For example:

    if (file_exists("snapshot1.png")) {
            print "Snapshot1.png exists!\n";
    } else {
            print "Snapshot1.png does not exist!\n";
    }

Warning

The result of file_exists() is cached, which means you first need to call the clearstatcache() function if you want to be absolutely sure a file exists.