Search for a string in a *.txt file?

Gary_King

How can I search for a string in a *.txt file?

WinterDragon

How is the txt file organized? is all information on seperate lines? or is it all in a glob of text such as... a paragraph?

Gary_King

All of the information is on separate lines.

For example, if I was to search for example in test.txt, it would be by itself on its own line. Anything I search for, will be by itself on its own line.

WinterDragon

ok try this...


#Get the information into an array
$array = file("file.txt");

#Then search it!
#This will return where it was found...
$number = ("example", $array);

echo $array[$number];

That should work...

Gary_King

I get:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ',' in index.php on line 19

line 19:

$number = ("example", $array);

Any idea on why I get this error?

Weedpacket

Er, yeah; Winterdragon forgot to write the name of the function. Probably [man]array_search[/man] judging from what is there; problem is that it won't work, though, because the lines in the array have newline characters on the end. You'd need to search for "example\n".

If you have a guarantee that each line in the file won't be more than, say, 1024 bytes, using fopen() to open a file, and fgets() to read successive lines would probably be faster...

$fp=fopen(the file,'r');
$found=false;
while(!feof($fp))
{ $line=rtrim(fgets($fp,1024));
  if($line=='example')
  { $found=true; break;
  }
}
fclose($fp);
echo $found?"Found":"Not found";

cgraz

That's cause that code is to assign a value to a variable, but you're calling it as if it were a function (but no function was called). Winterdragon must've left out the actual function 😉

Try this

$number = array_search("example", $array);

Cgraz

EDIT: Weedpacket: Wasn't repeating any info, just hit reply before you submitted your post.

WinterDragon

ARGH!!! Yes he is correct i left out the actual function...

array_search()


$array = file("whatever.txt");

$number = array_search("example", $array);

echo $array[$number];

That will work, sorry bout that... hehe

Thanks weedpacket!!! 🙂

xblue

don't forget to trim() when working with file() since you need to get rid of the linebreaks that are still included in the results.

bezmond

ok, I understand the code posted here... however if I wanted to pull the information from an entire line that started with "example" how would I do that? Or would I have to search for the entire line? (the txt file I am using reads 3 numbers:
200000 216574 11
200001 489745 1
(user passwd rating)
if I wanted to pull the info from the 200001 line, what'd I do?

Thanks,
Andrew

xblue

if you can predict on which line it is, e.g. 200000 is the first # on the first line, and all others are a sequence without gaps, file() should do fine since you can directly any line from the array file returns.

else you might look into regular expressions, or decide to use a database instead of a flat file which should be far more efficient.

bezmond

The txt file will increase each line, i.e.
200000
200001
200002
and so on

can't use a database as this file is read by a program.

Andrew

xblue

I think this should work then

// offset, numbers begin with which number?
$offset = 2000;

$id = 2002;

$lines = file($filename);
$wantedline = trim($lines[$id-$offset]);

bezmond

Thanks. This works... Do you know anything about ammending data on a specific line? grins

Weedpacket

Basically, there's only one real way:

Read the whole file into an array.
Change the line you want to change.
Write the whole (amended) file out again.
Think about using a database

bezmond

well I'm a txt file virgin, so I'm not 100% sure how to do this... any sample code or references (other than php.net if possible as that site is a bit confusing!) would be worth several beers 🙂

Andrew

Weedpacket

Half a dozen threads in these forums found via the search page:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10231754
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10231691
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10224353
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10222604
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10222584
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10221675

bezmond

I think I owe you beer !!

Andrew

mexhosts

Hi, i am trying to find a way to search for a string in a text and then put it in a webpage, my txt file is a only one line with the format like:

00000000000,00,"username"

where 00000000000 is the id from the aplication
00 is the number of current users in the aplication and
username is the name of the moderator

How can i public this data in a php page with some format like:

your aplicationid is: 00000000000
users in your aplication: 00
moderator: username

Thank You for your help.

xblue

I'd suggest to explode the elements separated by a comma. you could use trim with additional argument to get rid of the doublequotes.

functions:
www.php.net/explode
www.php.net/trim