text search with php on a flatfile db!?!?!???

[winddancer]

Hi all,

I've got a problem!
Until now I have always been working with php and mysql, but now I am required to do a search on a flatfile database.

This is one file.
Each line got 32 datafields. seperated by "|" and each line ended with a linebreak.

Now I have a searchterm and I need to write a routine which searches through the lines for the searchterm and outputs the searchresult with not more than 18 hits per page.

...
my knowledge of working with files in php is restricted to the fopen command! Great hmm?

Is there any script or snippet out there which could help me?

Or how can I solve my problem the best way?

best regards

Sven

[destop]

fopen is a great place to start

take a look at this script

$file = "myFile.php";
$filie_open = fopen($file, "r");

// then you need to break the file down into a line by line array

$array = file("$file");

// you then explode each line using your seperator as the point to
// break the data into pieces you can do this by looping
// through the first array can use various methods to loop

for ($i=0;$i<count($array);$i++){

  $array_of_line = explode("|", $array[$i]);
  echo $array_of _line[0]." \n"; 
  echo $array_of_line[1]]."<br />\n"; ;
  echo $array_of_line[3];

  }

if your file contains somthing like

name|surname|dob|address

it should print out somthing like:

name surname
address

hope this helps i havn't tested it

[destop]

you might want to take a look at the file system and string functions in the manual for more help..