I need to build an associative array with the plugin name and the language file it uses in the following sequence: /whatever/path/length/public_html/wp-content/plugins/adminimize/languages/adminimize-en_US.mo /whatever/path/length/public_html/wp-content/plugins/audio-tube/lang/atp-en_US.mo /whatever/path/length/public_html/wp-content/languages/en_US.mo /whatever/path/length/public_html/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/languages/en_US.mo Those are the language files WordPress is loading. They are all inside /wp-content/, but with variable server paths. I'm looking only for those inside the plugins folder, grab the plugin folder name and the filename. Hipothetical case in PHP, where reg_extract_* functions are the parts I'm missing: $plugins = array(); foreach( $big_array as $item ) { $folder = reg_extract_folder( $item ); if( 'plugin' == $folder ) { // "folder-name-after-plugins-folder" $plugin_name = reg_extract_pname( $item ); // "ending-mo-file.mo" $file_name = reg_extract_fname( $item ); $plugins[] = array( 'name' => $plugin_name, 'file' => $file_name ); } } [update] Ok, so I was missing quite a basic function, pathinfo... :/ No problem to detect if /plugins/ is contained in the array. But what about the plugin folder name?