Search file for string and display sentence

[sarah]

I'm sure there is an easy way to do this, I'm just not thinking right now. I need to be able to search a file for a string and then display the sentence that contains it. (or at least x characters before and x characters after the string)

I can combine explode and substr, but is there a better way?

[hermand]

Sounds like as good a way as any.

[barand]

Get file contents

$fd = fopen ($filename, "r");
$contents = fread ($fd, filesize ($filename));

Find what you're looking for

$pos = strpos($contents, $searchStr);

Then get a substring surrounding that position

$extract = '... ' . substr ($contents, $pos-x, strlen($searchStr) + 2*x) . '...';
echo $extract;

hth