Writing Arrays into a File

Flunder

HI, There.

It should be so simple. I am trying to write a small function that reads an Array from a file (done so far), adds a new entry and writes it back to the File.

Problem, I can't figure out why my new entry merges with the last entry before.

I tried adding \r, \0, \n, etc. to my new entry but it doesn't work.

Can somebody tell me what special character seperates the entries in a file/array.

Or maybe there is another way to do this

Thanks a lot

mrmufin

If you could post the part of the code that you're struggling with, perhaps someone could provide some accurate assistance.

Flunder

Well, I will try to:

Have done so many different version, it is hard to sort out with one to choose. I'll be back in a minute

Flunder

Well, this is the kind of Way I would prefer to read and write the Array.

As you can see I am simply appending the new entry to the existing file. (In this case I tried to seperate the entry by using "/n")

<?php

// $NEW gets send per Get by the browser

$fnames = "names.txt"; 

$fp = fopen($fnames,"a+");
$Newnames = "\n".$NEW;
if (flock($fp, 2)) { 
	fwrite($fp, $Newnames, 100000);} 
fclose( $fp );

Now basically that works. I can load the array from the file using file() like this:

<?php

$fnames = file ('names.txt');

$i=0;
$ii=count($fnames);

for($i=0;$i<$ii;$i++){
echo "<option value=Si>",htmlspecialchars ($fnames[$i]);
}

But the new entry merges with the last one before.

That means if I start of with an array like this:

Tom
Jill
James

and enter a new name ("Tim") with the script above, the array comes out like:

Tom
Jill
James/nTim

You see what I mean, the "\n" is simply not working as a seperator for entries in an array.

So I tried "\r", "\0" and so on, but it still doesn't work.

Is there a special ascii or other sign, to generate a linebreak that is valid for file(); ?

Hope I could explain the problem correctly

Thanks - Flunder

mrmufin

First off, on Win32 platforms line breaks are specified by \r\n. On *nix clones and derivatives (Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc) newlines are a simple \n.

With that in mind, adjust your code as necessary for your platform.

Next, view the actual file that you're writing the data into. I don't mean in your browser, but with a plain-text editor (like Notepad, etc on Win32, or vi on *nix). Does the file appear as you would like it to when viewed outside of your browser?

When you pull a file into an array using the file() function, bear in mind as you loop through that array, that if you want to see line breaks in the displayed array they must be added to the text:

$ary = file('myfile.txt');
$n = count($ary);
for($i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
	// option one, use PHP's nl2br() function:
	echo nl2br($ary[$i]);
	// option two, 'manually' append a break on the end of each line:
	echo $ary[$i] . '<br />';
}

See if those tidbits help any...

Flunder

Thanks, a lot

I am a bit surprised, as I thought I would have done it exactly like this before (besides the echo statement).

Well, nevermind now it really works and I am happy.

Actually it looks like this now:

$fnames = "names.txt";

$fp = fopen($fnames,"a+");
$Newnames = $NEW."\n";
if (flock($fp, 2)) {
fwrite($fp, $Newnames, 100000);}
fclose( $fp );

$fnames = file ('names.txt');
$i=0;
$ii=count($fnames);
for($i=0;$i<$ii;$i++){
echo nl2br($fnames[$i]);
}
?>

Thanks once more - Now I can enjoy a nice evening