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is_readable

is_readable($filename)

Returns true when the file or folder exists and PHP has permission to read it. Otherwise it returns false.

Parameters

$filename – a path to a file or folder.

Examples

$file = sys_get_temp_dir() . "/garth-example.txt";
file_put_contents($file, "Hello");
var_dump(is_readable($file)); // bool(true)
// a missing file
var_dump(is_readable(sys_get_temp_dir() . "/missing.txt")); // bool(false)
// loading with a fallback value
$text = is_readable($file) ? file_get_contents($file) : "";
echo $text; // Hello
unlink($file);

Things to watch out for

The permissions are judged for the user PHP runs as (on a server usually the web server user), not for your FTP account.
True does not mean that reading will definitely succeed. The file can disappear in the meantime, or another program can lock it. So check the result of reading anyway.
On Windows PHP practically does not distinguish read permissions, the differences only show up on a Linux server.
PHP remembers the result during the script. After another program changes the permissions, call clearstatcache().