Question

I have written this simple script display all the files in a directory as a set of buttons.

This code reads from the upload directory and displays all files inside a submit button in a form.

$handle = opendir("upload");
echo '<form name="form" method="post" action="download.php">';
while($name = readdir($handle)) {
  echo '<input type="submit" name="file" value='.$name.' />';
}
echo '</form>';

Now the issue here is; every time I run the script I find two button at the beginning with contents . and ..

I have not been able to figure out what causes this issue.

Answer 1

What you have encountered are two special files used by the file system.

• . represents the current directory you are in.¹

• .. represents the parent directory of the current directory.²

^{Footnotes:
    1.} A path such as “/my_dir/././././././file” is equivalent to “/my_dir/file”.
    ^2. A path such as “/my_dir/../my_dir/../my_dir/file” is equivalent to “/my_dir/file” since .. will make you move “up” one level.

---

To get around the issue of showing these two to your user filter the content returned by readdir using something as the below:

while  ($name = readdir ($handle)) {
  if ($name == '.' || $name == '..')
    continue; /* don't echo anything, skip to next read */

   echo '<input type="submit" name="file" value='.$name.' />';
}