Wicked Cool PHP

#52: Checking to See If a File Exists

fopen() generates error messages if you're trying to open a file that doesn't exist, as do other functions such as unlink(), when you attempt to delete a nonexistent file. To see if a file exists before you perform a file operation, use the file_exists() function in a test condition:

<?
if (file_exists('file.txt')) {
    print 'OK, file.txt exists.';
}

As you can see, this function returns true if the file exists and false if it does not.