PHP Scandir returns extra periods

Question

So I am trying to build a script that scans a directory and returns random images to be used as backgrounds.

The php looks like this:

$dir = \"views         


        

Answer 1

'.' and '..' are returned for current and parent directory. You can filter them:

while (false !== ($filename = readdir($dh))) {
    if ($filename != '.' && $filename != '..')    
        $files[] = $filename;
}