[Resolved] Trying to search and return a record from a text file

[Strings]

I have a text file like the one below:

312:Lee:Stan:234525235
415: Doe:John:346347347
719:Smith:John:2362362362
110:Wong:Toby:125125125125

It's basically in this format: "customer id:last name:first name: order id" I'm trying to write a script where a user enters in a customer id and last name from a form and it searches through the text file and if it finds a match for both, it will return that line. Here's what I have so far:

<?php

function getRecord($oneRecordLine)
{
 global $cust_id;
 global $last_name;
 $eachline=explode(":","$oneRecordLine");  

 if($eachline[0]=="$cust_id" && $eachline[1]=="$last_name")
 {
  print_r($eachline);
 }
 else
 {
  print "not found";
 }
}

 $cust_id=$_POST['cust_id'];
 $last_name=$_POST['last_name'];
 $handle = fopen("customers.dat", "r") or die ("Can't open file");
 $buffer = fgets($handle);
 while (!feof($handle)) 
 {
  getRecord($buffer);
  $buffer = fgets($handle);
 } 
  ?>

It works, but the problem is if I do a search on cust_id = 719 and last_name = Smith, it returns

not found
not found
Array (.....
not found

instead of just

Array (.......

I've been messing around with the loop, but I don't know what's wrong. It should only display "not found" only once if nothing is found in the array.

[swr]

Your getRecord function always prints either the record or "not found". You're calling that function once for every line in the file, so naturally you're going to get a lot of output.

You either need to move the contents of the getRecord function into the while loop, or move the while loop into the function. The way you have the function seperate from the while loop just isn't going to work, because you have to go through the entire file before printing "not found". You don't know the record doesn't exist until after you've checked the entire file.

The usual way to do something like this is to loop through the file until you find the record. If you find the record, store it (in $record or whatever), and break out of the loop. After the loop, check if $record is set or not. If it is, you found a record. If not, then you must've gone through the whole loop without finding anything, and can print "not found".

By the way, you'd probably be much better off using a database to store your info.

[Strings]

Thanks for your help. I followed what you said in your last paragraph and it works properly now.