fopen and feof help

[Anon]

Ok, I have a file that may or may not exist. If it exists, I want to open it and start reading from it. If it doesn't exist, then I just want to create the file for now (I'll do something with it later). Anyways, this is the code I'm using:

$file_pointer = fopen("$dir/filename", "a+r");
while (!feof ($file_pointer)) {
...do something...
}

Now for some reason, even if the file did not exist and had to be created, the while loop is always executed. I guess my question is, how does PHP create a new file? I thought it just created a file with an EOF character in it but does it put something else in the new file too? That's the only thing I can think of to explain why the while loop is always entered--there's more than just an EOF character in the new file created.

Can someone give me a hand?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[flipis]

if(is_file("string_filename")){
$pointer = fopen("filename","r");
}else{
$pointer = fopen("filename","w");
}

It could be that you are using the "a" method for opening the file. That is for append.

Look here:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.is-file.php

Hope this helps

fLIPIS