Select random files out of a directory

[howa]

for example, there are 10K files in the directory,

given that i don't know if files name, is it possible to fetch a file
randomly?

thanks.

[Hendri Kurniawan]

Yes...
See opendir, readdir, rand
And get creative

Hendri Kurniawan
howa wrote:

for example, there are 10K files in the directory,

given that i don't know if files name, is it possible to fetch a file
randomly?

thanks.

[howa]

Hendri Kurniawan ¼g¹D¡G

Yes...
See opendir, readdir, rand
And get creative

Hendri Kurniawan
howa wrote:

for example, there are 10K files in the directory,

given that i don't know if files name, is it possible to fetch a file
randomly?

thanks.

the problem is:

there are too many files in the folder, e.g. over 10K or more, i don't
want to list it

but i know that it must contains 10K files, so it is possible to get ,
say 1020th file under this folder?

[Skeleton Man]

>the problem is:

>there are too many files in the folder, e.g. over 10K or more, i don't
want to list it
but i know that it must contains 10K files, so it is possible to get ,
say 1020th file under this folder?

Use scandir() to return an array of filenames and array_rand() to pick a
random entry from that list.. (see the manual for details)

Chris

[Hendri Kurniawan]

Unless other people knows any other methods.

for($i = 0; $i < 1024; $i++) $fileName = readdir($dirHan dler);
print $fileName;

Now if you know the file names, that is another matter.

Hendri Kurniawan

howa wrote:

Hendri Kurniawan ¼g¹D¡G

>Yes...
See opendir, readdir, rand
And get creative

Hendri Kurniawan
howa wrote:

>>for example, there are 10K files in the directory,

given that i don't know if files name, is it possible to fetch a file
randomly?

thanks.

the problem is:

there are too many files in the folder, e.g. over 10K or more, i don't
want to list it

but i know that it must contains 10K files, so it is possible to get ,
say 1020th file under this folder?

[Hendri Kurniawan]

BTW scandir is not available prior to PHP5
Just a note

Hendri Kurniawan

Skeleton Man wrote:

>the problem is:
there are too many files in the folder, e.g. over 10K or more, i don't
want to list it
but i know that it must contains 10K files, so it is possible to get ,
say 1020th file under this folder?

Use scandir() to return an array of filenames and array_rand() to pick a
random entry from that list.. (see the manual for details)

Chris

[Martin Mandl - m2m tech support]

If you have access to system commands you could try the following:

1) Get the number of files using something like: ls | wc
2) Use your random generator
3) Now pick your line e.g. for file # 123: ls | head -123 | tail -1

Have fun
howa wrote:

for example, there are 10K files in the directory,

given that i don't know if files name, is it possible to fetch a file
randomly?

thanks.

[Curtis]

$dir = './';
$files = array();
$file = '';
if ( is_dir($dir) ) {
if ( $d = opendir($dir) ) {
while ( ($file = readdir($d)) !== false ) {
if ( !is_dir($file) ) $files[] = $file;
}
}
}

// specify an int for the optional 2nd arg if you
// need more than one random file
$randomKeys = array_rand($fil es);
$randomFile = $files[$randomKeys[0]];

$files holds an array of all files in the directory specified in the
$dir variable. This can take the place of scandir if you're running on
a version of PHP prior to 5.x.

On Jan 4, 9:30 pm, Hendri Kurniawan <ask...@email.c omwrote:

BTW scandir is not available prior to PHP5
Just a note

Hendri Kurniawan

Skeleton Man wrote:

the problem is:
there are too many files in the folder, e.g. over 10K or more, i don't
want to list it
but i know that it must contains 10K files, so it is possible to get ,
say 1020th file under this folder?

Use scandir() to return an array of filenames and array_rand() to pick a
random entry from that list.. (see the manual for details)

Chris

[howa]

Martin Mandl - m2m tech support ¼g¹D¡G

If you have access to system commands you could try the following:

1) Get the number of files using something like: ls | wc
2) Use your random generator
3) Now pick your line e.g. for file # 123: ls | head -123 | tail -1

Have fun
howa wrote:

for example, there are 10K files in the directory,

given that i don't know if files name, is it possible to fetch a file
randomly?

thanks.

thanks....all examples should work for me...but a little bit slow as my
folder contains more than 10K files....thanks anyway

[Martin Mandl - m2m tech support]

Another idea: Why don't you load the names of your files into a
database. If you do this with an automatic task, it does not matter how
long it takes. ... and getting a random result form the database should
not take that long ...

howa wrote:

thanks....all examples should work for me...but a little bit slow as my
folder contains more than 10K files....thanks anyway