Question

I’m looking for a script to loop through a folder and delete all the files inside it but the last, most recent one ( I have marked the name of each file as filename_date('Y')_date('m')_date('d').extension), not sure if relevant ).

I have found this script here on stack:

if ($handle = opendir('/path/to/your/folder')) 
{
    $files = array();
    while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) 
    {
        if (!is_dir($file))
        {
            // You'll want to check the return value here rather than just blindly adding to the array
            $files[$file] = filemtime($file);
        }
    }

    // Now sort by timestamp (just an integer) from oldest to newest
    asort($files, SORT_NUMERIC);

    // Loop over all but the 5 newest files and delete them
    // Only need the array keys (filenames) since we don't care about timestamps now as the array will be in order
    $files = array_keys($files);
    for ($i = 0; $i < (count($files) - 5); $i++)
    {
        // You'll probably want to check the return value of this too
        unlink($files[$i]);
    }
}

This above deletes anything but the last five. Is this a good way to do it ? Or is there another way, simpler or better one ?

Answer 1

That works. I don’t believe there’s a simpler way to do it. Plus, your solution is actually quite simple.