recursivedirectoryiterator

RecursiveDirectoryIterator is a class in PHP that allows for the iteration over a directory and its subdirectories recursively. It implements the Iterator interface, making it compatible with standard PHP loop constructs like foreach. When instantiated, it takes the path to the directory as its first argument. By default, it traverses the directory structure from the top down.

The iterator yields instances of RecursiveDirectoryIterator itself, allowing for nested iteration. It provides methods to control the iteration behavior, such as setting flags to modify how filenames are returned or to include or exclude certain types of files. For example, the RecursiveDirectoryIteratorSkipDots flag can be used to ignore the '.' and '..' entries.

To fully utilize the recursive nature, RecursiveDirectoryIterator is often used in conjunction with RecursiveIteratorIterator. The latter takes a RecursiveDirectoryIterator (or any other recursive iterator) as its input and flattens the recursive structure into a single, linear sequence of items. This makes it easy to process all files and directories within a given path without explicitly writing nested loops. It is a powerful tool for file system manipulation and traversal in PHP.