For C/C++ programmers.
fscanf() does not work like C/C++, because PHP's fscanf() move file pointer the next line implicitly.
(PHP 4 >= 4.0.1, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
fscanf — Parses input from a file according to a format
The function fscanf() is similar to
sscanf(), but it takes its input from a file
associated with stream and interprets the
input according to the specified format.
Any whitespace in the format string matches any whitespace in the input
stream. This means that even a tab (\t) in the format
string can match a single space character in the input stream.
Each call to fscanf() reads one line from the file.
streamA file system pointer resource that is typically created using fopen().
format
The interpreted format for string, which is
described in the documentation for sprintf() with
following differences:
F, g, G and
b are not supported.
D stands for decimal number.
i stands for integer with base detection.
n stands for number of characters processed so far.
s stops reading at any whitespace character.
* instead of argnum$ suppresses
the assignment of this conversion specification.
varsThe optional assigned values.
If only two parameters were passed to this function, the values parsed will be returned as an array. Otherwise, if optional parameters are passed, the function will return the number of assigned values. The optional parameters must be passed by reference.
If there are more substrings expected in the format
than there are available within string,
null will be returned. On other errors, false will be returned.
Example #1 fscanf() Example
<?php
$handle = fopen("users.txt", "r");
while ($userinfo = fscanf($handle, "%s\t%s\t%s\n")) {
list ($name, $profession, $countrycode) = $userinfo;
//... do something with the values
}
fclose($handle);
?>
Example #2 Contents of users.txt
javier argonaut pe hiroshi sculptor jp robert slacker us luigi florist it
For C/C++ programmers.
fscanf() does not work like C/C++, because PHP's fscanf() move file pointer the next line implicitly.It would be great to precise in the fscanf documentation
that one call to the function, reads a complete line.
and not just the number of values defined in the format.
If a text file contains 2 lines each containing 4 integer values,
reading the file with 8 fscanf($fd,"%d",$v) doesnt run !
You have to make 2
fscanf($fd,"%d %d %d %d",$v1,$v2,$v3,$v4);
Then 1 fscanf per line.If you want to read text files in csv format or the like(no matter what character the fields are separated with), you should use fgetcsv() instead. When a text for a field is blank, fscanf() may skip it and fill it with the next text, whereas fgetcsv() correctly regards it as a blank field.Yet another function to read a file and return a record/string by a delimiter. It is very much like fgets() with the delimiter being an additional parameter. Works great across multiple lines.
function fgetd(&$rFile, $sDelim, $iBuffer=1024) {
$sRecord = '';
while(!feof($rFile)) {
$iPos = strpos($sRecord, $sDelim);
if ($iPos === false) {
$sRecord .= fread($rFile, $iBuffer);
} else {
fseek($rFile, 0-strlen($sRecord)+$iPos+strlen($sDelim), SEEK_CUR);
return substr($sRecord, 0, $iPos);
}
}
return false;
}If you want to parse a cron file, you may use this pattern:
<?php
while ($cron = fscanf($fp, "%s %s %s %s %s %[^\n]s"))
{
}
?>to include all type of visible chars you should try:
<?php fscanf($file_handler,"%[ -~]"); ?>actually, instead of trying to think of every character that might be in your file, excluding the delimiter would be much easier.
for example, if your delimiter was a comma use:
%[^,]
instead of:
%[a-zA-Z0-9.| ... ]
Just make sure to use %[^,\n] on your last entry so you don't include the newline.