fileatime

Last updated: Fri, 02 Jan 2009

file

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

file — Reads entire file into an array

Description

array file ( string $filename [, int $flags [, resource $context ]] )

Reads an entire file into an array.

Note: You can use file_get_contents() to return the contents of a file as a string.

Parameters

filename

Path to the file.

Tip

A URL can be used as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. See fopen() for more details on how to specify the filename and List of Supported Protocols/Wrappers for a list of supported URL protocols.

flags

The optional parameter flags can be one, or more, of the following constants:

FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH: Search for the file in the include_path.
FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES: Do not add newline at the end of each array element
FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES: Skip empty lines
FILE_TEXT: The content is returned in UTF-8 encoding. You can specify a different encoding by creating a custom context. This flag cannot be used with FILE_BINARY. This flag is only available since PHP 6.
FILE_BINARY: The content is read as binary data. This is the default setting and cannot be used with FILE_TEXT. This flag is only available since PHP 6.

context

A context resource created with the stream_context_create() function.

Note: Context support was added with PHP 5.0.0. For a description of contexts, refer to Stream Functions.

Return Values

Returns the file in an array. Each element of the array corresponds to a line in the file, with the newline still attached. Upon failure, file() returns FALSE.

Note: Each line in the resulting array will include the line ending, unless FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES is used, so you still need to use rtrim() if you do not want the line ending present.

Note: If PHP is not properly recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, enabling the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option may help resolve the problem.

Changelog

Version	Description
6.0.0	Added support for the `FILE_TEXT` and `FILE_BINARY` flags.
5.0.0	The `context` parameter was added
5.0.0	Prior to PHP 5.0.0 the `flags` parameter only covered include_path and was enabled with 1
4.3.0	file() became binary safe

Examples

Example #1 file() example


<?php
// Get a file into an array.  In this example we'll go through HTTP to get
// the HTML source of a URL.
$lines = file('http://www.example.com/');

// Loop through our array, show HTML source as HTML source; and line numbers too.
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
    echo "Line #<b>{$line_num}</b> : " . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br />\n";
}

// Another example, let's get a web page into a string.  See also file_get_contents().
$html = implode('', file('http://www.example.com/'));

// Using the optional flags parameter since PHP 5
$trimmed = file('somefile.txt', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES);
?>

Notes

Warning

When using SSL, Microsoft IIS will violate the protocol by closing the connection without sending a close_notify indicator. PHP will report this as "SSL: Fatal Protocol Error" when you reach the end of the data. To work around this, the value of error_reporting should be lowered to a level that does not include warnings. PHP 4.3.7 and higher can detect buggy IIS server software when you open the stream using the https:// wrapper and will suppress the warning. When using fsockopen() to create an ssl:// socket, the developer is responsible for detecting and suppressing this warning.


on file() and flock()



My supervisor came up with a brilliant plan to workaround the inability of the file() to work on a flock()'ed file.



We created a dummy file called lockfile.txt.  We would flock() lockfile.txt.  Once we had a lock on it, we used file() on the file we wanted to read, then altered the file and called fclose on both files.

jon+spamcheck at phpsitesolutions dot com
16-Apr-2008 10:03


A user suggested using rtrim always, due to the line ending conflict with files that have an EOL that differs from the server EOL.



Using rtrim with it's default character replacement is a bad solution though, as it removes all whitespace in addition to the '\r' and '\n' characters.



A good solution using rtrim follows:



<?php

$line = rtrim($line, "\r\n") . PHP_EOL;

?>



This removes only EOL characters, and replaces with the server's EOL character, thus making preg_* work fine when matching the EOL ($)

bubbles
05-Apr-2008 12:45


althought it's mentioned twice in the description, it took me a whole night to figure out  why i got new-lines in my array.



hence you have to put a flag on it FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES.



I mention, just you wouldn't miss this little anoying thing.



*you can use trim, but it's slighty different.

vbchris at gmail dot com
16-Feb-2008 10:15


If you're getting "failed to open stream: Permission denied" when trying to use either file() or fopen() to access files on another server. Check your host doesn't have any firewall restrictions in-place which prevent outbound connections. This is the case with my host Aplus.net

Reversed: moc dot liamg at senroc dot werdna
12-Jul-2007 11:25


This note applies to PHP 5.1.6 under Windows (although may apply to other versions).



It appears that the 'FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES' flag doesn't remove newlines properly when reading Windows-style text files, i.e. files whose lines end in '\r\n'.



Solution: Always use 'rtrim()' in preference to 'FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES'.

info at carstanje dot com
28-Nov-2006 09:33


Using file() for reading large text files > 10 Mb gives problems, therefore you should use this instead. It is much slower but it works fine. $lines will return an array with all the lines.



$handle = @fopen('yourfile...', "r");

if ($handle) {

   while (!feof($handle)) {

       $lines[] = fgets($handle, 4096);

   }

   fclose($handle);

}

richardtcunningham at gmail dot com
11-Jul-2006 11:19


justin at visunet dot ie's note of 20-Mar-2003 states

"Note: Now that file() is binary safe it is 'much' slower than it used to be. If you are planning to read large files it may be worth your while using fgets() instead of file()."



I tested fgets(), file_get_contents(), and file() on PHP 4.3.2 and PHP 5 and timed each to be under a second with over 200,000 lines. I do not know if he was testing extremely long lines or what, but I could not duplicate the difference that he mentioned.

jonathan dot gotti at free dot fr
01-Feb-2006 11:52


you can use 

$file = array_map('rtrim',file('myfile.txt'));

to remove annoying ending lines of the resulting array.

Nuts
19-Jan-2006 12:16


WARNING ON WINDOWS:

file() function will add "\r\n" in to the end of the row, even if you use only "\n" char to make rows in the file!



On UNIX systems there is no such problem.

dir @ badblue com
12-Sep-2003 11:48


Jeff's array2file function is a good start; here are a couple of improvements (no possibility of handle leak when fwrite fails, additional capability of both string2file and array2file; presumably faster performance through use of implode).



function String2File($sIn, $sFileOut) {

  $rc = false;

  do {

    if (!($f = fopen($sFileOut, "wa+"))) {

      $rc = 1; break;

    }

    if (!fwrite($f, $sIn)) {

      $rc = 2; break;

    }

    $rc = true;

  } while (0);

  if ($f) {

    fclose($f);

  }

  return ($rc);

}



function Array2File($aIn, $sFileOut) {

  return (String2File(implode("\n", $aIn), $sFileOut));

}



If you're generating your string text using a GET or POST from a TEXTAREA (e.g., a mini-web-text-editor), remember that strip_slashes and str_replace of "/r/n" to "/n" may be necessary as well using these functions.



HTH --dir @ badblue com

John
21-Jul-2003 01:32


after many months of confusion and frustration, i have finally figured out something that i should have noticed the first time around.



you can't file("test.txt") when that same file has been flocked. i guess i didn't have a full understanding of what i was doing when i used flock(). all i had to do was move the flock() around, and all was well.

justin at visunet dot ie
20-Mar-2003 06:36


Note: Now that file() is binary safe it is 'much' slower than it used to be. If you are planning to read large files it may be worth your while using fgets() instead of file() For example:



$fd = fopen ("log_file.txt", "r");

while (!feof ($fd)) 

{

   $buffer = fgets($fd, 4096);

   $lines[] = $buffer;

}

fclose ($fd);



The resulting array is $lines.



I did a test on a 200,000 line file. It took seconds with fgets()  compared to minutes with file().

03-Mar-2003 11:16


You can use file with https if you go to:



http://ftp.proventum.net/pub/php/win32/misc/openssl/. 



This is instead of using the php_openssl.dll, so be sure to comment this extension in your php.ini.

andrea at brancatelli dot it
16-Mar-2002 08:16


file() has a strange behaviour when reading file with both \n and \r as line delimitator (DOS files), since it will return an array with every single line but with just a \n in the end. It seems like \r just disappears.



This is happening with PHP 4.0.4 for OS/2. Don't know about the Windows version.

php@don't_spam_me
09-Feb-2002 09:56


It appears that the file() function causes file access problems for perl cgi scripts accessing the same files.  I am using Perl v5.6.0 in linux with PHP/4.0.4pl1.  After running a php app using the file() function, any perl cgi trying to access the same file randomly dies returning an internal server error: premature end of script headers.



The simple fix is to use fopen(), fgets() and fclose() instead of file().

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