PHP Manual: Create file with unique file name

Description

string tempnam ( string $dir , string $prefix )

Creates a file with a unique filename, with access permission set to 0600, in the specified directory. If the directory does not exist or is not writable, tempnam may generate a file in the system's temporary directory, and return the full path to that file, including its name.

Parameters

dir: The directory where the temporary filename will be created.
prefix: The prefix of the generated temporary filename.

Note: Windows uses only the first three characters of prefix.

Return Values

Returns the new temporary filename (with path), or FALSE on failure.

Changelog

Version	Description
4.0.3	This function's behavior changed in 4.0.3. The temporary file is also created to avoid a race condition where the file might appear in the filesystem between the time the string was generated and before the script gets around to creating the file. Note, that you need to remove the file in case you need it no more, it is not done automatically.

Examples

Example #1 tempnam example


<?php
$tmpfname = tempnam("/tmp", "FOO");

$handle = fopen($tmpfname, "w");
fwrite($handle, "writing to tempfile");
fclose($handle);

// do here something

unlink($tmpfname);
?>

Notes

Note: If PHP cannot create a file in the specified dir parameter, it falls back on the system default. On NTFS this also happens if the specified dir contains more than 65534 files.

tempnam