Unlink/File_exists says the file does not exist, but the file does exist

Question

Hello,

I have a problem with PHP, I need a script that deletes a file in a directory, all passed by URL, as in the script I made below:

<?php

$file = !isset($_GET["f"])?0:$_GET["f"];
$dir = !isset($_GET["dir"])?"":$_GET["dir"];

var_dump($dir.$file);

if ($file === 0)
{
    echo 0;
    die();
}

if (file_exists($dir.$file)) 
    echo unlink($dir.$file);
else 
    echo 0;

?>

The problem is in the following, the function file_exists() and unlink(), of which I pass the path by parameter, say that the file I am trying to access does not exist. Using var_dump() I realized that the return is as follows:

string(30) "C: xampp htdocs aaaa teste.txt"

The file exists in the specified directory, but the functions say no. See:

The file exists, the directory is correct, I’ve tried with (use the character deviation) but the same. Please help me!

Addendum to attempts already made:

• Exchange file_exists() for is_file()
• Use clearstatcache() before checking the file
• Switch to \\

None have yielded results, all have failed.

Answer 1

I had the same problem these days.

Try to use urldecode() when reading the GET parameters:

$file = !isset($_GET["f"])?0:urldecode($_GET["f"]);
$dir = !isset($_GET["dir"])?"":urldecode($_GET["dir"]);

It may be that bars are being converted to %2F

Answer 2

I managed to solve, I was doing tests on my local computer, some kind of lock or permission (I couldn’t identify yet) was preventing the function is_file() or file_exists() to check the file.

I moved the files to the company’s production server, and now it worked, thank you all very much.

I was confused because the folders were with full access permission (from my local computer), but the solution for me was to test on the production server.