2 Questions

[Anon]

1. How can I search a textfile for a string and return the whole line?
2. How can I sort by a certin number word (like "this is a test" and I want to sort by second word)

Thanks!

[Anon]

May be, you can use the following for the second question:

For every $line (in your example $line="this is a test", I suppose, you have a number of such lines, in array or...) you do:

$line_arr=explode(" " ,$line);
$arr_to_sort[$line_arr[1]]=$line;

Now after you go through all $line's you have array of values like:
"is"=>"this is a test"

Now you can use ksort() for $arr_to_sort - read manual about it. But it will work only fpr unique words by which you're sorting, of course.

[Anon]

I'm a complete newbie in php, so how would I do that? like:

For every $x
$line_arr=explode(" " ,$x);
$arr_to_sort[$line_arr[1]]=$x;
Loop

?

Thanks again, any idea about first question?

[Anon]

1. As for the first question. My suggestion is not really nice, but may be, it can help you.
   Read the whole file into an array with file() function (read manual), then go through this array and search in each line for the string. And take to the result only those lines of array which cotnain your string. Like this (those lines which contain "seacrh_string" are printed out, example is taken from several manual articles, I did not test it, I have doubts about strpos() - please, read about it):

<?php
// get a web page into an array
$fcontents = file( 'http://www.php.net' );
while ( list( $line_num, $line ) = each( $fcontents ) ) {
$pos = strpos ("search_string", $mystring);
if ($pos) {
//Search string is found
echo("<BR>".$line);
}
}
?>

If you're new to PHP, just read manual about all function used here.

2. For example, if the list of your lines in which you're searching for the second word, is an array:
   $search_arr=array(
   0=>"This is a test",
   1=>"One more test",
   2=>"second test");

You make a cycle for this array:
while($x=$search_arr[]){
$line_arr=explode(" " ,$x);
$arr_to_sort[$line_arr[1]]=$x;
}

How to organise this cycle depends on where you're taking search lines from - here from array.