Auto delete all files after x-time

Question

How do you auto delete all files under a sub directory after x-time (let say after 24 hours) - without using a cronjob command from server or pl. How can you do this just us

Answer 1

$path = 'folder/subfolder/';

/* foreach (glob($path.'.txt') as $file) { */
foreach (glob($path.'*') as $file) {

    if(time() - filectime($file) > 86400){
      unlink($file);
    }
}

Answer 2

After trying to use these examples, I hit a couple of issues:

1. The comparison operator should be greater than, not less than
2. filemtime returns the modified time. filectime is the time when a file's inode data is changed; that is, when the permissions, owner, group, or other metadata from the inode is updated, which may lead to unexpected results

I changed the example to use filemtime and fixed the comparison as follows:

<?php
  $path = dirname(__FILE__).'/files';
  if ($handle = opendir($path)) {

    while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
        if ((time()-filemtime($path.'/'.$file)) > 86400) {  // 86400 = 60*60*24
          if (preg_match('/\.txt$/i', $file)) {
            unlink($path.'/'.$file);
          }
        }
    }
  }
?>