unknown format -HELP! =)

Anon

In the PHP online documentation, the fscanf() function, under Filesystem functions, uses formatting that I have never seen before. For Pete's sake, what is it?!! =)

It looks like this: %s\t%s\t\n

What is '%s' ???

Of course, I understand '\t' is tab, '\n' is newline, but what is '%s' ??

It seems to act like a wildcard, that's all I know.

What is the origin of this? Where can I learn more about it?

Thank you in advance. Chris.

Anon

Look at the printf() function. %s is a string place holder used to fill that location with the string data following the command.

so printf("%s\t%s\t\n", "string1", "string2") will produce the output:

string1    string2

If it's in a loop it will generate a 2 column list. It's taken directly from the way C uses the printf() function. Which makes sense since PHP is written in C.

khaine

The formating that you refer to the %s %i is actually the same as c formating in printf and scanf. this is what each one means.

%s - string
$d - Decimal value
%i - integer
%f - floating point number.

I asume the online doceumentation you are looking at is something like.

$fp = fopen ("users.txt","r");
while ($userinfo = fscanf ($fp, "%s\t%s\t%s\n")) {
list ($name, $profession, $countrycode) = $userinfo;
//... do something with the values
}
fclose($fp);

In this case the fscanf is saying it will accept a string then a tab another string and a tab and finally a string and a tab. this is put into the variable $userinfo.
A better example would be.

$fp = fopen ("users.txt","r");
while ( !feof($fp) )
{
list($in_num, $user_name) = fscanf ($fp, "%i%s\n")
}
fclose($fp);

This will accept a file that looks something like
00001 fred
00002 bill
00003 jane

it will read the file and store each line based on the data type. so after the first read $id_num will be "00001" and $user_name will be "fred".

You can see all the %s type things if you have a look on the help for sprintf.

Hope that helps.

Mark.

Anon

Tnx guys, your answers were great.