Checking File Existence in PHP

The function file_exists checks whether a file, whose path is passed as a parameter, exists. Example:

phpvar_dump(file_exists('test.txt')); // true or false

Typically, this function is used to check for a file's presence before performing an operation on it. For example, like this:

php<?php
  if (file_exists('test.txt')) {
    echo filesize('test.txt');
  } else {
    echo 'file does not exist';
  }
?>