array file ( string $filename [, int $flags = 0 [, 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.

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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. See the List of
Supported Protocols/Wrappers for links to information about what abilities the
various wrappers have, notes on their usage, and information on any predefined
variables they may provide.

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
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.

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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.

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Changelog

Version Description
5.0.0 The context parameter was added
Prior to PHP 5.0.0 the flags parameter only covered include_path and was enabled
5.0.0
with 1
4.3.0 file() became binary safe
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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 number
s 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_LIN
ES);
?>
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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.

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See Also

 readfile() - Outputs a file

 fopen() - Opens file or URL
 fsockopen() - Open Internet or Unix domain socket connection
 popen() - Opens process file pointer
 file_get_contents() - Reads entire file into a string
 include() - include
 stream_context_create() - Create a streams context

fileatime file_put_contents

Last updated: Fri, 22 Oct 2010

 
add a note User Contributed Notes
file
marios88 at gmail dot com
06-Feb-2010 10:59
Quick and easy way to reverse read a file without array_reverse

<?php
$myfile = 'test.txt';
$lines = file($myfile);   
for($i=count($lines);$i>0;$i--){
    echo $lines[$i];
}
?>
d basin
14-Oct-2009 10:47
this may be obvious, but it took me a while to figure out what I was doing
wrong. So I wanted to share. I have a file on my "c:\" drive. How do I
file() it?

Don't forget the backslash is special and you have to "escape" the
backslash i.e. "\\":

<?php

$lines = file("C:\\Documents and Settings\\myfile.txt");

foreach($lines as $line)
{
    echo($line);
}

?>
hope this helps...
PenguinMan98 at usa dot net
21-Apr-2008 10:49
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 08:03
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 ($)
vbchris at gmail dot com
16-Feb-2008 09:15
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 09:25
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 08:33
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.

<?php
$handle = @fopen('yourfile...', "r");
if ($handle) {
   while (!feof($handle)) {
       $lines[] = fgets($handle, 4096);
   }
   fclose($handle);
}
?>
richardtcunningham at gmail dot com
11-Jul-2006 09:19
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 10:52
you can use
$file = array_map('rtrim',file('myfile.txt'));
to remove annoying ending lines of the resulting array.
Nuts
18-Jan-2006 11:16
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 09:48
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).

<?php
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
20-Jul-2003 11:32
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 05:36
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:

<?php
$fd = fopen ("log_file.txt", "r");
while (!feof ($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().
andrea at brancatelli dot it
16-Mar-2002 07:16
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 08:56
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().