[PHP] best way to read a file
This is a really simple question that I've wondered for a while now... what is the best way to read a file? There are so many different functions for reading files that I have no idea which I should use. readfile() returns its values to standard output -- I don't want to use this, since my script needs to load the data in the file into a variable (it's a .xsl file). fgets() looks like it could work if I made an array out of each line read and then imploded them. fread() looks like the 'main' function for reading from files. fpassthru() -- I guess if you're already in the middle of a file it's a good way to finish? There are other functions for reading files, but they are less ambiguous, with purposes like reading from sockets or certain kinds of files. I'm not interested in those -- I just want to know which function I should use to simply read a file and store the file's contents in a variable (for later actions to be performed on/with this variable). Thank you. Erik Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] best way to read a file
Actually if you have output buffering active then the easiest hassle free way to read a file into a variable is like this.. ? ob_start(); readfile($url, 1); $file = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); echo $file; ? Pretty cool eh? Hope that helps. -- Kevin Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Erik Price [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 5:03 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PHP] best way to read a file This is a really simple question that I've wondered for a while now... what is the best way to read a file? There are so many different functions for reading files that I have no idea which I should use. readfile() returns its values to standard output -- I don't want to use this, since my script needs to load the data in the file into a variable (it's a .xsl file). fgets() looks like it could work if I made an array out of each line read and then imploded them. fread() looks like the 'main' function for reading from files. fpassthru() -- I guess if you're already in the middle of a file it's a good way to finish? There are other functions for reading files, but they are less ambiguous, with purposes like reading from sockets or certain kinds of files. I'm not interested in those -- I just want to know which function I should use to simply read a file and store the file's contents in a variable (for later actions to be performed on/with this variable). Thank you. Erik Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] best way to read a file
you didn't mention file() that one can be pratical because it returns an array of lines (linefeed intact, implode with empty string), but can be memory consuming for large files, because the entire file is in memory the at the same time. some times you don't need the entire file (at a time) .. for example fread() allows you to read a specific length fgets() one text line at a time with max length fgetss() ..and strip HTML.. fgetcsv() or return a line from a .csv as an array.. not really ambiguous, and I think these functions being flexible enough to handle other resource types can hardly be seen as a disadvantage.. bvr. Erik Price wrote: This is a really simple question that I've wondered for a while now... what is the best way to read a file? There are so many different functions for reading files that I have no idea which I should use. readfile() returns its values to standard output -- I don't want to use this, since my script needs to load the data in the file into a variable (it's a .xsl file). fgets() looks like it could work if I made an array out of each line read and then imploded them. fread() looks like the 'main' function for reading from files. fpassthru() -- I guess if you're already in the middle of a file it's a good way to finish? There are other functions for reading files, but they are less ambiguous, with purposes like reading from sockets or certain kinds of files. I'm not interested in those -- I just want to know which function I should use to simply read a file and store the file's contents in a variable (for later actions to be performed on/with this variable). Thank you. Erik Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] best way to read a file
On Thursday, March 28, 2002, at 07:34 PM, bvr wrote: not really ambiguous, (actually, that's what I was saying, that they are -less- ambiguous, and more specific, but no big deal on that little matter). and I think these functions being flexible enough to handle other resource types can hardly be seen as a disadvantage.. Every time I try to use one of these functions, I get an error message from my browser (not from PHP) that the attempt to load the URL failed. Is this a sign of running into memory problems? If so, what can I do about it? It seems that the only file-reading function that doesn't create this error message in my script is fgets(), but as soon as I try to implode the lines I pulled with fgets() into one string, I get the error message again. In other words, every time I try to pull my XSL file into my script, it happens. (I would not have imagined I would run out of memory b/c I have php.ini set to 16M per script and the XSL file is only 8kB, though the script does do a lot of things.) Anybody know what's going on here? Erik Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] best way to read a file
not really ambiguous,
(actually, that's what I was saying, that they are -less- ambiguous,
and more specific, but no big deal on that little matter).
ok, misunderstood
Every time I try to use one of these functions, I get an error message
from my browser (not from PHP) that the attempt to load the URL
failed. Is this a sign of running into memory problems? If so, what
can I do about it? It seems that the only file-reading function that
doesn't create this error message in my script is fgets(), but as soon
as I try to implode the lines I pulled with fgets() into one string, I
get the error message again. In other words, every time I try to pull
my XSL file into my script, it happens.
(I would not have imagined I would run out of memory b/c I have
php.ini set to 16M per script and the XSL file is only 8kB, though the
script does do a lot of things.)
Anybody know what's going on here?
Try not to use MSIE when developing or install the debug thingie,
otherwise you will not get sensible feedback on what went wrong during
page load..
Anyway, it's probably not the memory limit, because in that case PHP
reports an error..
Did you even enable-memory-limit ?? If you did, use can try this with
your httpd.conf :
Add somewhere global :
LogFormat %h %l %u %t \%r\ %s %b %{mod_php_memory_usage}n php
Add to mainserver/virtualhost:
CustomLog /usr/local/apache/logs/access_log php
This adds an extra value to the access log entries that indicates the
largest number of bytes of memory used by the script at a time.
bvr.
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Re: [PHP] best way to read a file
while we're on the topic, what's the best way to append an CSV line onto the end of a text file? ---mail.csv--- Justin,French,[EMAIL PROTECTED]\n Fred,Flintstone,[EMAIL PROTECTED]\n Barny,Rubble,[EMAIL PROTECTED]\n --- I'd like to append a new line:: $newline = Hank,Foo,[EMAIL PROTECTED]\n; ...onto the end of file. I guess the process is, but I'm keen to hear improvements :) ? $newline = Hank,Foo,[EMAIL PROTECTED]\n; $file = data/mail.csv; $fp = fopen($file,'a+'); flock ($fp,2); fwrite($fp,$newline); fclose($fp); ? I can't find fulock(), so I guess closing the $fp unlocks the lock. Many thanks, Justin French Creative Director http://Indent.com.au -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] best way to read a file
On Thursday, March 28, 2002, at 08:14 PM, bvr wrote: Try not to use MSIE when developing or install the debug thingie, otherwise you will not get sensible feedback on what went wrong during page load.. Good advice, I'll try with Mozilla. Anyway, it's probably not the memory limit, because in that case PHP reports an error.. I'm starting to suspect the same, read on... Did you even enable-memory-limit ?? If you did, use can try this with your httpd.conf No, I didn't... I just noticed that in php.ini there is a setting for max memory per script (default was 8M, I raised it to 16 before, when I thought this was the problem). I believe the problem is the xslt_process() function. I actually was able to read the file in my script after all, so I'm almost positive that it's not a problem with that. No, what happened in fact was that if the file was read successfully, it was passed as an argument to the xslt_process() function. If xslt_process() was the source of my problem, then that would explain why it crapped out every time I included file-reading functions -- because I wasn't testing in isolation, rather, I was testing with the xslt_process() function and couldn't see the forest for the trees. I'm going to try some of the other methods for using xslt_process() listed at the man page, I was trying the simpler 3-argument version. There's a more complex 6-argument function that I will try now, and see if that works. But it seems that I only get this error when attempting a successful xslt_process(). (I know that it is successful because I am testing its success in the script.) Thanks, bvr. I'll continue to bug test. Erik Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
