Writing to particular line in a file?

basil

Ok, another dumb newbie question. I have learned how to write to a file and to append stuff to a file, but how would I do the following:

Say I have a file called myfile.txt which contains data on separate lines like this:

Name
Address
Phone
DateofBirth
.
.
.
etc.

Say I want to write to this file and only overwrite the Phone# with a new Phone#. How would I do that?
Thanks in Advance
Basil

xblue

there is no way to write to a specific line in a flat file. you'd probably be better off with a database, but if you have to stay with text files, you'd need to read the complete file, modify its content, and then overwrite the file with it.

tomwerner

yeah, the only way would be to put the whole contents of the file into an array, alter the appropriate variable in the array then write the whole array to the file. Have a look at http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.file.php for opening a file into an array. Setting the new array value is easy just do $array[line_number_of_line_u_want_2_change] = $newlinedata.

planetsim

I dont suggest this method if you want pages to load fast.

This method of:
Opening
Copying
Changing Lines
Update File
Closing

Is quite slow, and your best off using a database, if you dont have access. Then i guess this is your only option.

However ive never really used the File Functions..

But im pretty sure if your textfile setting is

DateofBirth: blah etc

Your setting your txt file out wrong.

You should set it out like this

1|planetsim|not telling|0000-0000| etc

1 being the users ID

Then a new line for someone else.

Then just get it all into an array using explode();. That way you can just update the array. Without needing to copy it all. Not sure if its faster or slower than the method suggested.