Listing all directories, sub directories and files starting from the root

well . and .. are not directories, thats are navigationpoints of directories, . means go inside a root directory, .. means go one folder back,

you might noticed this already in includes like include ../../../foo/bar.php

also instead of scandir and readdir php has classes for this purpose DirectoryIterator or FileSystemIterator

And if you wish to create reusable methods, dont do output there, instead return an array of folders/files something like

$directories = scanDirectories($rootDirectory); //create output array foreach($directories as $directory){ echo $directory.'<br/>'; } 

this allowes you to modify the output without editing the sourcecode, you could also wrap the output within a function e.g. viewDirectories and reuse it on different places.

here is a small Example

 ini_set('html_errors', 'On'); function scanDirectory($path) { $path = realpath($path); return new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($path), RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST); } foreach(scanDirectory('./') as $name=> $object){ echo $name.'<br/>'; } 

About your question:

$root.$dir_list[$var].$name //this is your directory name 

but youre checking if this name is . and ..

$dir_list[$var] 

so its never becomes true

1. If you invert your if condition and continue with next loop entry then you can reduce your level of nesting.
2. You will currently miss all files in the first $root (due do the outer is_dir condition).

3. You should be able move the recursion further to the top. The shorted algorithm for recursively listing directories goes like this (pseudo code):

   func list(root) print "Directory: " + root foreach (entry in contentof(root)) if (entry is directory) list(entry) else print "File: " + entry 

   In your code that could look something like this:

   function directory_f_lister($root) { echo "<h3>Name of directory: $root</h3>"; echo "<br>"; for (scandir($root) as $current) { $currentFullPath = $root.$current; if (!is_readable($currentFullPath) || $current == "." || $current == "..") continue; if (is_dir($currentFullPath)) { list($currentFullPath); } else { echo $current; echo "<br>"; } } } 

4. Your approach intermingles the iteration of the structure (filesystem) with the actions of what to do for each item (printing). A better way would be to simply use the DirectoryIterator to iterate over the filesystem and print each item.