Outputting an entire array to a file?

stovellp

I know I can use the function file() to read the contents of a file into an array. I then want to edit one line in that array, then write the whole thing back. Do you have any quick ways to do this? I know I could get the ammount of lines read and then fwrite() every line of the array to the file again, but is there an easier way, like the oppisite of file()?

~ Paul

trexx

there is an easy way! PHP allows to serialize every object (similar to java). you can serialize your array and save the resulting string in a file. if you want the array again, load the file, deserialize the string and you'll have your array back.

take a look at this:
http://www.php.net/manual/de/function.serialize.php

stovellp

Thanks very much, this serialising certainly looks interesting, I'll be sure to keep it in mind. Unfortunately I have a lot of other scripts that read from this same file and its important that it keeps the same format, and I can't go changing every script for serialising, although it would probably be a much better thing to do. Oh well, Its only a few lines of code to do this writing loop, I just wondered if there was a shorter way of doing it.

But serialising does look very interesting, and I'm sure I'll be using a lot if it in the future. Thanks!

~ Paul

trexx

i understand. uhm... ok: you already have your file stored in an array and change whatever you want.
then you use:

$myFile = implode( "\n", $myArray );

it returns a string with a newline at the end of each element of the array. just save the content of this string to your file.