getting from file

[Anon]

ok, say im trying to make a guestbook or something. the user inputs his name and message. that info gets put into a .txt file seperated by a colon like this...

jim:hey dude!
bob:whats up man?

now what i need help with is recalling this information back onto a webpage.

so if i wanted it to be like...

hey dude! by jim
whats up man? by bob

how would i do this?

thanks.

[Anon]

I wrote a guestbook recently as one of my first decent sized use of PHP.. i'm not anywhere near a PHP pro so don't take what I say as gospel.

Personally, I'd store the text like..

Jim
[seperator 1 here]
Hi Man!
What's
Up!
[seperator 2 here]

Then use fgets() with a filesize of the whole text file to retrieve a line at a time.
Then check these lines to see if they are / aren't the seperators, and take appropriate action accordingly.