Question

Is there a better way to check if a dir is empty than parsing it?

Answer 1

Don’t think so. Shortest/quickest way I can think of is the following, which should work as far as I can see.

function dir_is_empty($path)
{
    $empty = true;
    $dir = opendir($path); 
    while($file = readdir($dir)) 
    {
        if($file != '.' && $file != '..')
        {
            $empty = false;
            break;
        }
    }
    closedir($dir);
    return $empty;
}

This should only go through a maximum of 3 files. The two . and .. and potentially whatever comes next. If something comes next, it’s not empty, and if not, well then it’s empty.