How to determine a file's extenstion, etc.

[JasonDFR]

Every once in a while there is a question involving how to determine the characteristics of a file. I'm reading a book called Pro PHP patterns, frameworks, testing and more. And I just learned about this:

<?php

$file = '/path/to/file/file.ext';

$pathInfo = pathinfo($file);

echo 'Extension: ' . $pathInfo['extension'] . '</br />';

echo 'Base name: ' . $pathInfo['basename'] . '</br />';

echo 'Directory name: ' . $pathInfo['dirname'] . '</br />';

echo 'File name: ' . $pathInfo['filename'] . '</br />';

?>

Pretty much lies to rest any discussion on how to determine a file's extension.

[Nile]

Or if you dont want an array, you could just do:

echo pathinfo('file.php', PATHINFO_EXTENSION);

[Twey]

What exactly is '</br />' supposed to be?

Note that the extension of a file does not uniquely determine the contents of that file. Only the contents themselves do. For a more accurate attempt at guessing the intended interpretation of those contents, try mime_content_type() or, in PHP 5.3 or later, the Fileinfo module.

[JasonDFR]

What exactly is '</br />' supposed to be?

It's a typo. I bet you have even made a typo before. Should be <br />. And yes, I know you don't approve of XHTML.

[Twey]

Oh, OK, I thought you copied it from the book

Oh, I do approve of XHTML. If I ever made a purely personal site that I could be sure wasn't going to be used as part of my portfolio, I would use XHTML in a trice. In fact, I write all my templates in XHTML, and then have them converted on the fly to HTML4 for IE (the power of Genshi). For serious sites, though, most clients want to have IE support, and I hear it's considered unprofessional to throw away half your users

[JasonDFR]

Intriguing. Later today or tomorrow I am going to start a thread in the HTML form to talk more about this Twey. With your method, everyone can be happy.

See ya,

J